^ 



AN ESSAY 



ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 



AN ESSAY 



ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 

BASED ON MODERN EESEAECHES, 
AND ESPECLILLY ON THE WOEKS OF M. EENAN. 



BY FEEDEEIC W. FAEEAE, M.A. 

LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAI^TBRIDGE. 




LONDON : 
JOHN MUREAY, ALBEJilAELE STEEET. 

1860. 



-^ 



^^' 



.^5 



LONDON : 

BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. 



TO 

EICHAED GAEXETT, ESQ., 

OF THE BRITISH ilUSEUM, 

IN 

RE3IE^IBEAXCE OF ISIANY ACTS OF HELP AXD KINDNESS. 



PREFACE. 



I ^isH this little book to be in every respect 
as unpretending as possible. I do not presume 
to represent myself as an original investigator, 
nor do I aspire to a greater distinction than 
that of representing clearly and intelligently 
the views of those distinguished writers who 
have made the study of philology the chief 
pursuit of their lives. 

"While I have quoted my authorities for 
almost every statement of importance, I have 
generally used my own language, and even in 
those paragraphs which I have put between 
inverted commas I have so frequently abbre- 
viated, expanded, or transposed, that the pas- 



VIU PREFACE. 

sages must not be criticised as though they 
had been intended for direct translations. 

I do not think that I have ever borrowed from 
any writer, English, French, or German, without 
ample acknowledgment. I would not be so 
dishonest as to shine in borrowed plumes. If 
in one or two cases I have been guilty of 
apparent plagiarism it is certainly only from 
the works of those authors whom I cannot be 
considered to have robbed wilfully, because 
their writings are honourably referred to on 
almost every page. I wish this remark to 
apply especially to the very clear, learned, and 
beautiful treatises of M. Ernest Eenan, to which 
I am largely indebted, and without which I 
should not have undertaken this work. 

The questions here handled have always been 
to me full of interest; and these chapters have 
been chiefly written because I have invariabty 
found that they are also full of interest to young 
learners. Should it be proved that I have rashly 



PREFACE. IX 

intruded on a task beyond my powers, no one 
will more regret this attempt than I shall 
myself. 

The books of which I have made chief use 
in the following pages are 

Grimm, Ueher dxn Ursirrung der Spraclie. 

Hej'se, System der Sj^xcducisscnschaft. 

Lersch, Die Sirra^hjpliilosoijhie der Alien. 

Eenan, Be VOrigine dAO Langage. 

Renau, Histoire Generale des Langucs Serditiques. 

Charma, Ussai sur le Zangage. 

Xodier, Notions dx Linguistique. 

Bimsen, Philosophy of Universal History. 

Max Miiller, Survey of Languages. 

Pictet, Les Origines Ind.o-Euroueennes. 

Garnett's Philological Essa.ys. 

Dr. Doualdson's Cratylus. and Yarronianv.s. 

It need scarcely be said, however, that I 
have read and consulted very many besides 
these, and indeed every book that I could 
obtain which seemed to bear directly upon the 
subject. 

I will only add with M. Xodier — '' J'ai ecrit 



X PREFACE. 

sur la Linguistique, parce que je ne cpnnois 
aucun livre qui renferme les notions principales 
d'une maniere claire, sous une forme accessible 
aux esprits simples, qui ne soit pas repoussante 
pour les esprits delicats/* 

Falmouth, 

Aug.y 1860. 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE ORIGIX or LANGUAGE. 0- 

PAGE 

The faculty of speech. — Definition of language. — Importance 
of philology. — Three main theories on the origin of 
language — 1. That language was innate and organic. — 
Curious errors. — Objections to this view. — 2. That lan- 
guage was the result of imitation and convention. — 
Objections. — 3. That language was revealed. — In what 
sense this may be held to be true. — The phrase obscure, 
and leads to many misconceptions. — Danger of a mis- 
applied literalism. — Five objections to the common belief. 
— The real meaning of Gfen. ii. 19, 20. — Rightly under- 
stood it exactly accords with the true theory. — Germ of 
truth in each of these views. ..... 1 

CHAPTER II. 

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DEYEL0P3IEXT OF THE LDEA OF SPEECH. 

GrERMiNAL development of language. ^ — How came words to be 
accepted as signs ?— The inquiry not absurd. — What is 
a word ? — Words only express the relations of things. — 
Connection of thought and speech. — GroT\i:h of indi- 
viduality. — Theory of ]\I. Steinthal. — Speech depends 
on the power of abstraction; the transformation of 
intuitions into ideas. — 1. Impressions awoke sounds.- 



Xll CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

2. Sounds, "by tlie association of ideas, recalled im- 
pressions. — 3. Sounds became words by connecting the 
external object and the inward impression. — Influence 
of organism. — Earliest impressions expressed by the 
simplest sounds. — Influence of women.— Influences of 
climate. ......... 34 

CHAPTER in. 

THE LAWS OP SPECIAL SIGXIFICAXCE, OPv THE CREATION OF 
ROOTS. 

Words never yurely arbitrary. — They become conventional in 
time, — Corruptions produced by the dislike of mechanical 
words. — Inappropriate corruptions. — "Words, significant 
at first, are allowed to become conventional. — Grrammar 
the life of a language. — Onomatopoeic or imitative words. 
— Motive of words. — Delicacy of the appellative faculty. 
— The imitation always purely artistic. — Instances of the 
spontaneous tact which gives rise to new names. . . 53 

CHAPTER lY. 

ONOMATOPCEIA. 

Sounds naturally used as" the signs of sounds ; as among 
infants, and savage races. — Wide application of this law 
overlooked. — The imitation modified organically and 
ideally. — Admirable perfection of the organs of sound. — 
Boundless capabilities of lauguage, — Diversity of relations 
gave rise to different imitations. — Hoots universally 
onomatopoeic. — Cause of dialectic variety. — Interjections 
and onomatopoeia the two natural elements of language. — 
Instances of words derived from exclamations ; and from 
imitation. — Supposed vulgarity of onomatopoeic words. — 
Their real dignity when well used. —Instances from 
the poets.— They cannot be avoided. — Harmonies of 
language. . . . . . . . .72 



CONTENTS. XIU 

CHAPTEE Y. 

THE de^t:lop3ie^'t of roots. 

PAGE 

Roots supposed to be primitive and irredncible. — "Words 
derived from sensible images ; tbe personal pronouns ; 
and even the numerals. — The verb 'to be,' in all lan- 
guages, from a material ro«t. — Permutations and com- 
binations of a fe"^ roots. — Instances of their diffusiveness. 
The root *ach.' — The root *dhu.' — The same root to 
express opposite meanings. — Eoots refracted and re- 
flected. — Important applications of these remarks. . 97 

CHAPTER VI. 

MZTAPHOE. 

We know nothing absolutely. — Language an asymptote. — 
Necessity of analogy to express things. — All words 
ultimately derivable from sensible ideas. — Instances in 
the Semitic languages. — Graphic effects thus produced. — 
Words involve all history. — Catachresis and metaphor. — 
Defence of both from the charge of imperfection. — 
Necessity, power, and value of metaphor. — Comparisons 
of style. — Rigid accuracy and clumsiness of scientific 
terminology. — Words are but symbols. — The two worlds. 
— Poetry of life to the primal man, and its influence on 
language. — A nation's language expresses its character. . 116 

CHAPTEE Til. 

WOBDS NOTHEsG IN THEMSELVES. 

IxFEEENCES drawn from the derivation of all words from 
* sensible ideas.' — Gradual degeneracy of the Sensational 
School. — Condillac. — Helvetius. — The Diversions of 
Purley. — Real derivation of the words *If' and 'Truth.' 
— What words really stand for. — The conclusions of 
nominalism need not be accepted. — Reason.- — Words 
which can onlj' be explained by the idea. . . .147 



XIV CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE LAWS OF PROGRESS IX LANGUAGE. 

PAGE 

These laws psychological. — 1 . Languages advance from 
exuberance to moderation by eliminating superfluities. — 
Unity of speech the result of civilisation. — Redundancy 
marks an early stage of -> thought. — Superfluous words 
dropped or desynonymised. — 2. Languages advance from 
indetermi nation to grammar. — Simplicity succeeds com- 
plexity. — Instances of agglutination. — 3. Langua.ges ad- 
vance from synthesis to analysis. — Tmesis a relic of 
Polysynthetism. — Analysis not inferior to synthesis for 
the expression of thought. — Instances in the Indo- 
European and Semitic languages. — Grrimm on the English 
language. — Some would add a 4ih law, viz. : the progress 
from monosyllabism. — Arguments in favour of this law. 
— It remains very questionable ; only a convenient 
hypothesis. . . . . . . . .166 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE FAINHLIES OF LANGUAGES. 

Stages of Language. — The logical order not the historical. — 
1. The Indo-European and Arian family. — Its unity and 
importance, — Life of the early Arians. — *' Linguistic 
Palaeontology." — 2. The Semitic family. — Its character 
and divisions. — 3. The Allophylian or Turanian (?) 
family (?). — Can only be called a 'family' hypothetically. 
— Includes a vast number of languages, which have very 
little connection with each other. . . . .18.5 

CHAPTER X. 

ARE THERE ANY PROOFS OF A SINGLE PRI^nTIYE LANGUAGE? 

Immense number of languages dead as well as living. — 
Three irreducible families. — Arguments in favour of an 
original language. — 1. AU may be derived (not from 



CONTENTS. Xy 



each other, but) from some lost language. — Objections. — 
2. Supposed affinities between different families, i. Non- 
Sanskritic elements in Celtic, ii. Possible reduction of 
the triliteral Semitic roots. — Objections. — 3. Languages 
apparently anomalous. — Egyptian, Berber, &c. — How 
they may possibly be accounted for. — Inference. — 
Apparent successions of races. — 1. The inferior races. — 
2. The semi- civilised. — 3. The great noble races . . 203 

CHAPTER XI. 

THE rUTURE OF LANGUAGE. 

1. Destinies of the Arian race. — The future of the English 
language. — The distinction of nations a design of Provi- 
dence. — 2. Advantages which result from diversities of 
language. — Indispensable for the preservation of truth. — 
Yalue of knowing languages. — 3. A universal language 
could, in the present state of the world, only last for a 
short time. — Conclusion 220 



A LIST of books valuable as forming an Introduction to the 

Study of Philology 229 



AN ESSAY 



THE OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE 



CHAPTER I. 

THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 
'' Sprache ist der voUe Atliem menscHiclier Seele." — Giii:^^. 

Of all the faculties wlierevrith God has endowed 
his noblest creature, none is more divine and 
mysterious than the faculty of speech. It is the 
gift whereby man is raised above the beasts ; the 
gift whereby soul speaks to soul ; the gift whereby 
mere pulses of articulated air become breathing 
thoughts and burning words ; the gift whereby 
we understand the affections of men and give 
expression to the worship of God ; the gift whereby 
the lip of divine ^ inspiration uttering things 
simple and unperfumed and unadorned, reacheth 

* ^i^vWa 5e {xoLivoiiivco drSfjLaTL KaO^ 'HpawAeiToy ayeXacrra Kal 
aKa\K(ji}Tn(TTOL koX aixvpiara (pd^yyojxevi) xiXioov ircoy i^mvelrai rrj 
rpcci^fj dLo. rhv 06oV.— Plut. de Pyth, Orac. p. 397 et p. 62 7. Wytt. 
Lapalle's HeraclituSy p. 29. 



2 AN ESSAY ON 

with its passionate voice through a thousand gene- 
rations by the help of God. 

"y Language is the sum total of those articulate 
sounds which man, by the aid of this marvellous 
faculty of speech, has produced and accepted as the 
signs of all those inward and outward phenomena 
wherewith he is made acquainted by sense and 
thought. ^syThese signs are "those* shadows of 
the soul, those living sounds which we call words ! 
and compared with them how poor are all other 
monuments of human power, or perseverance, or 
skill, or genius ! They render the mere clown an 
artist, nations immortal, writers, poets, philoso- 
phers divine ! " Let him who would rightly un- 
derstand the grandeur and dignity of speech, 
meditate on the deep mystery involved in the 

revelation of the Lord Jesus as the Word of God. 
4-'*' 

No study is more rich in grand results than the 

study of language, and to no study can we look 

with greater certainty to elucidate the earliest 

history of mankind. For the roots of language t 

* Sir Jolin Stoddart. ^^Bei allem was Spraclie heissen soli, 
wird scHechterdings niclits weiter beatsichtiget, als die Bezeicli- 
rning des Gfedankens. " — Fichte, Von der S^rachfdhiglceit und 
dem Ursprunge der Sprache. **Die Spraclie ist die Aeusserung 
des denkenden Geistes in articulirten Lauten." — Heyse, System der 
Sprachwissenschaft, S. 35. 

i* Grimm, iilier den Ur sprung der Sprachej S. 11. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 3 

spring in the primitive liberty of human intelh- 
gence, and therefore its records bear on them the 
traces of human history. We read with deep 
interest the works of individual genius, and trace 
in them the life and character of the men on 
whom it has been bestowed ; we toilfully examine 
the unburied monuments of extinct nations, and 
are rewarded for years of labour if we can finally 
succeed in gaining a feeble glimpse of their history 
by deciphering the unknown letters carved on the 
crumbling fragments of half-calcined stone ; but 
in language we have the history not only of indi- 
viduals but of nations ; not only of nations but of 
mankind. For unlike music and poetry, which 
are the special privilege of the few, language* is 
the property of all, as necessary and accessible as 
the air we breathe. Of all that men have invented 
and combined ; of all that they have produced or 
interchanged among themselves ; of all that they 
have drawn from their peculiar organism, lan- 
guage is the noblest and most indispensible trea- 
sure. An immediate emanation of human nature, 
and progressing with it, language is the common 
blessing, the common patrimony, of mankind. It 
is ant admirable poem on the history of all ages ; 

* Grimm, s. 52. 

t Kenan, De VOrigine du Langage, Deux. ^d. p. 69. 

B 2 



4 AN ESSAY OX 

a living monument, on which is written the 
genesis of human thought. Thus ''the gi'ound^ 
on which our civihsation stands is a sacred one. 
for it is the deposit of thought. For language, 
as it is the mirror, so is it the product of reason, 
and as it embodies thought, so is it the child of 
thought. In it are deposited the primordial 
sparks of that celestial fire, which, from a once 
bright centre of civilisation, has streamed forth 
over the inhabited earth, and which now abeady, 
after less than three myriads of yeai^s, forms a 
galaxy round the globe, a chain of light from j)ole 
to pole." 

Philology, the science which devotes itself to 
the study of language, has recently! arrived at 
results almost undreamed of by preceding cen- 
turies. Indeed, it received its most vigorous im- 
pulse from the acquaintance with the languages 
of India, and, above all, with Sanskrit, which, 
like so many other great blessings, dii'ectly re- 
sulted from our dominion in India. Already it 
has thrown new light on many of the most per- 
plexing problems of religion, history, and ethno- 
graphy ; and, being yet but an infant science, it 
is in all probability destmed to achieve triumphs, 

* Bunseii on the Philosophy of Universal History, ii. 126. 
t Humboldt's Cosmos J ii. 107 — 109, ed. Sabine. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 5 

of which at present we can but dimly prophesy 
the consequences* 

Since the most ancient monuments of Sanskrit, 
Zencljt Hebrew, and in fact of all languages, are 
separated, j)erhaps by thousands of years from f 
the appearance of language (i. e,, from the creation 
of the human race), it might seem impossible to 
throw any light on that most interesting of all 
considerations, the origin of language. And yet 
so permanent are the creations of speech, so in- 
variable and ascertainable are the laws of its 
mutation, that the geologist is less clearly able 
to describe the convulsions of the earth's strata 
than the philologist to point out, by the indica- 
tions of language, the undoubted traces of a 

^ Philology has been well defined as the cognitio cogniti, and 
Comparative Grammar, (the branch of Philology which occupies 
itself with the study of the birth, the development, and the 
decadence of various languages, together with their divergences and 
affinities), has deserved the title of Qpi-yKos /uLadrjixdrccj/ ^iXoKoyiKiav, 
*Hhe coping-stone of philological inquiries." See Science Com- 
parative des Langues, par Louis Benloew. Paris, 1858. 

i" Thus, though Zend and Sanskrit are the oldest languages of the 
Indo-European family, they are offsets of an older primitive one. 
^' Among other evidences of this, maybe mentioned the changes 
that words had already undergone in Zend and Sanscrit from the 
original form they had in the parent tongue ; as in the number 
'twenty,' which being in the Zend ^visaiti,^ and in Sanscrit 
' vinsaiti,' shews that they have thrown off the 'd' of the original 
'dva,' two."— Sir G. Wilkinson in Rawlinson's Herod, i. p. 280. 



b AX ESSAY OX 

nation's previous life. On the stone tablets of 
the universe, God's own finger has written the 
changes which millions of years have wrought on 
the mountain and the plain: in the fluid air, 

which he articulates into human utterance, man 
has preserved for ever the main facts of his past 
history, and the main processes of his inmost 
soul. The sonorous wave, indeed, which transmits 
to our ears the uttered thought, reaches but a 
little distance, and then vanishes like the tremu- 
lous ripple on the surface of the sea ; but, con- 
scious of his destiny, man invented writing to 
give it perpetuity from age to age. Its short 
reach, its brief continuance; are the defects of the 
spoken word, but when graven on the stone or 
painted on the vellum it passes from one end of 
the earth to the other for all time ; it conquers at 
once eternity and space.* 

From the earliest ages the origin of language 
has been a topic of discussion and speculation, 
and a vast number of treatises have been written 
upon it. But it is only in modern times that we 
have collected sufficient data to admit of any 
consistent or exhaustive theory, and the earlier-^ 

* Cliarnia, Fssai sur It L:u\gage, p. 60. 

f "lei ccnime ailleiirs en a c:iniDenc-e par Mtir des systemes, 
an lien de se "homer a robserva::;n Ci- fuiis.'" — Abel Kemnsat. 



THE OEIG-IX OF LANGUAGE . 7 

writers contented themselves for the most part 
with building systems before thev had collected 
facts. 

There have been three main theories to account 
for the ai^pearance of language, and it will be both 
interesting and instructive to pass them in brief 
review. They are : — 1. That language was innate 
and organic. '2. That language was the result 
paiily of imitation, and partly of convention. 
3. That language was revealed. It will be seen 
from our consideration of them, that none of 
these theories is in itself wholly true or adequate, 
yet that each of them has a partial value, and 
that they are not so irreconcileably opposed to 
each other as mio"ht at first si^ht be imaoined. 

1. It was believed by the ancients generally, 
and perhaps by the majority of moderns, that 
language was innate and organic; i.e., a distinct 
creation synchronising with the creation of man. 
The inferences drawn from this supposition led 
men to regard words as '"'types of objective 
reality, the shadow of the body and the image 
reflected in the mirror.''* The words were sup- 

* Bunseii, Phil, of Un. Hist. i. 40. The pMlosophers "^ho 
held these views were called *' Analogists," while those who leaned 
to the conYentional origin of language were styled *' Anomalists." 
Bat Plato and Aristotle admit the existence of both principles, and 
have written on the subject with a depth of philosophical insight, 



S AX ESSAY ON 

posed to be not only a sign of the thing intended 
by them, but in some Tvay to partake of its natiu^e, 
and to express and symbolise something of its 
idea. Hence the very notion of arbitrariness was 
well-nigh expelled from language, and there was 
supiposed to be a deep harmony* between the 
physiological quality of the sound and its signifi- 
cance — between the combination and connection 
of sounds with the connection and combined 
relations of the things they represented. AYho- 
ever. therefore, knew the names, knew also the 
things which the names implied.-^ However 

vrhich, in spite of their defective knowledge, lias never been sur- 
passed. See Humboldt's Cosmos, i. 41. ii. 261. 

* Plato's Cratylus, p. 423, et passim ; and Schleiermacher s Intro- 
duction. The great authority on the ancient views of philology 
is Lersch, Sjjrachphilosophie der Alien, (Bonn. 1838-1841.) 
The question which agitated the schools was, (bvaei to. ouofMura ^ 
94g-€l; it was generally decided in favour of the *^ Analogists,*' 
though often for frivolous reasons. See AuL GelL Noct. Att. x. 
4. (^Eenan, p. 137.) Cf. Xen. Mera. iv. 6. 1. Arrian, Epict. 
L 17, ii. 10. Marc. Aur. iii. 2 ; v. 8 ; x. 8. These views of the 
mimetic character of words (Arist. JRhet. iii. 1, 2), and their 
intrinsic connection with things, did not seem to he much disturbed 
by the fact of the multiplicity of languages/ although this fact led 
Aristotle to place the conventional element first. The very word 
^dpBapos implies a lofty contempt for all languages except Greek, 
and traces of a similar contempt may be found in the vocabulary 
of many nations. Cf. Timtim, Zamzummim, &c., Eenan, p. 178. 
Pictet's Origines Indo-Eur. p. 5Q, seqq. (1 Cor. xiv. 11.) 

't OS ay Ta oyofiara [iTri(TT7]Tai inicrTCLddai Kcd ra irpdyfiara. 
Plato, Crat. 435, e. In proof that Plato did recognise both 



THE OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 9 

strange and eyen ridiculous these views may 
appear to our somewhat superficial and unphilo- 
sophical age, it is far more difficult to understand 
them truly than to speak of them contemptuously, 
and they led to a reverence for the use of speech 
which reacted beneficially in producing careful 
writing and accurate thought. 

The belief that language was iimate led to the 
strange hallucination that if a child were entirely 
secluded from human contact, he would speak 
instinctively the primitive language of mankind. 
According to Herodotus, the experiment was 
actually made by Psammetichus, King of Egypt, 
who entrusted two new-born infants to a shep- 
herd, with the injunction to let them suck a goat's 
milk, and to speak no words in their presence, but 
to observe what word they would first utter. After 
two years the shepherd visited them, and they 
approached him, stretching* out their hands, and 
uttering the word ^e/coy. It was found that this 
vocable existed in the Phrygian language, and 
meant " bread ; " w^hence it was sagely inferred 
that the Phrygians spoke the original language, 

elements of language — tlie absolute and tlie conTentJQnal, see 
Crat. 435, c, and PhiloL Trans. iiL 1S7. For an able espositiQa 
of tke CratyluSj see Dr. Donaldson's Neio Cruf. p. ^3, seqq. 
* Herodot. ii. 2. 



10 AN ESSAY ON 

and were the most ancient of people. There is 
in this story such a delicious naivete, that one 
could hardly expect that it would have happened 
in any except very early ages. It can, however, 
be paralleled by the popular opinion which attri- 
buted the same experiment to James lY. and 
Frederic II. * in the Middle ilges. In the latter 
case the little unfortunates died for want of 
lullabies ! Similarly, almost every nation has re- 
garded its own language as the primitive one. 
One of the historians of St. Louis says that a deaf 
mute, miraculously healed at the king's tomb, 
spoke, not in the language of Burgundy, where 
he was born, but in the language t of the capital. 
A similar belief seems to underlie the extreme 
anxiety and curiosity of savages to learn the name 
of any article hitherto unknown to them, as though 

* Raumer, GescTi. der Holiensfaufen, iii. 491, qnoted by BaeKr, 
Herod. 1. c. For some other theories on the primitive language, see 
Cardinal "Wiseman's Lectures on Science, i. 19. Becanus supposed 
seriously that Low Dutch was spoken in Paradise. Herinathena, 
lib. is. p. 204. *'That children naturally speak Hebrew," is one 
of the vulgar errors which had to be exploded even in the time of 
Sir T. Browne. Vulg. Err. v. ch. 26. When James lY. of Scotland 
repeated the experiment of Psammetichus, the infants were shut up 
with a duTttb man, and spoke Hebrew spontaneously ! Basque, 
Swedish, Buss, &c,, have all had their advocates. Charma, Essai 
sur le Langage^ p. 2i2, seqq. Leibnitz, Lettre a M. de Sparven- 
feldf § 8. + Eenan, p. 147. 



THE OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 11 

the name had some absolute significance. This 
is not the place to enter into a discussion of that 
deep germ of truth which such fancies iuYolve ; 
but hints of it may be found in Holy ^ Scripture. 

No doubt at first sight it appears that much 
might be said in favour of the innate and organic 
nature of language. Its beauty,t its diversity, its 
power, its diffusion over the whole surface of the 
globe, give it the supernatural air of a gift which 
man, so far from originating, can only ruin and 
destroy. We see that in favourable situations 
language, like vegetation, flourishes and blos- 
soms, while elsewhere it fades and dies away as 
a plant loses its foliage when deprived of nourish- 
ment and light. It seems, too, to participate in 
that healing power of nature, which effaces rapidly 
all trace of wounds received. Like nature, it 
produces mighty results out of feeble resources — 
it is economical without avarice, and liberal with- 
out prodigality. 

Again; do we not see that almost every living 
thing is endowed in infinite variety with the 

* There are some noMe remarks to tMs effect in Sclilegel's 
PhilosopTiische Vorlesungen, Wiem. 1830. Hebrew scliolars mU 
readily remember cases of the importance attached by the sacred 
writers to the mere sound of words ; a remarkable instance may 
be seen in Jer. i. 11, 12, and a cnrious play on sounds occurs in the 
second verse of Grenesis. f Grimm, s, 12. 



12 AN ESSAY ON 

faculty of uttering sounds, and even of inter- 
communicating feelings ? * The air is thrilled 
with the voice of birds, and some of them even 
l^ossess a power of articulation, which among 
many nations is the distinctive t definition of 
man. Xay, fancy has attributed to animals a 
power of language in the age of gokl — a power 
which under certain I circumstances thev are 
supposed to be still allowed to exercise. 

But this leads us to the true point of difference. 
The dog barks, as it barked § at the creation, and 
the crow of the cock is the same now as when it 
reached the ear of repentant Peter. The song of 
the nightingale, and the howl of the leopard, have 
continued as unchangeable as the concentric 

* " I •am by no means clear that the dog may not have an 
analogon of words." — Coleridge. Similarly Plato attribntes a 
^id\€KTos to animals, adducing some very interesting proofe. See 
Clemens Alexandr. Strojn. i. 21, § 413. See, too, Thomsons 
Passions of Animals. '^They also know, and reason not con- 
temptibly." — ]\Iilton. 

"h ^epowes ^poTOL. — Homer, jDassim. 

J As in the instance of Balaam. — Numb. 22. Cf. Tibull. ii. 
T. 7S. Horn. II. T. 407, &c. 

§ Dr. Latham poiats out that this statement requii-es modifica- 
tion ; e.g., it is doubtfal whether a howlf and not a bai-k, is not 
the organic and instinctiye sound uttered by dogs. {Encycl. Brit. 
Art. Language.) Still we do not anticipate that any one will dispute 
the general proposition. See Heyse, System derSprachwissenschajr, 
§25. 



THE OEIG-IX OF LANGUAGE. 13 

circles of the spider, and the waxen hexagon of 
the bee. The one as much as the other are the 
result of a blind though often perfect instinct. 
They are unalterable because they are innate, 
and the utterances of mankind would have been 
as unchangeable as those of animals, had they 
been in the same way the result not of liberty 
but of necessity. To the cries of animals we 
must comjDare, not man's ever-varying language, 
but those instinctive sounds of weeping, sobbing, 
moaning — the changeless scream, sigh, or laughter 
— by which, since the creation, he has given re- 
lief or expression to his physical^ sensations. 

In point of fact — as a thousand experiments 
might have proved to Psammetichus — a new-born 
infant possesses the facultv of lanraagfe, not 
actually, but only potentially. It is obvious that 
an Italian infant, picked up on the field of Sol- 
ferino and carried to Paris, would not have spoken 
Italian but French, and an English babe, carried 
off by the Caffirs, would find no difficulty in 
learning the rich lano-uaae of Caftraria, with its 
five-and-twenty moods. For language is clearly 
learned bv imitation. This is the intermediate 



^ GriiTiTn, 13, 14. ^'Langnagej'' lie adds (p. 17), *'can only 
be compared to tlie cries of animals, in respect that both are sub- 
jected to certain physical conditions of organism." 



14 AN ESSAY ON 

link between the Si-ra/xts and the €pyov. When 
poor Kaspar Hauser tottered into the streets of 
Xiiremburg, the only words he could say were, 
^' I will be a soldier as my father was," because 
those were the only words which he had heard 
in his miserable confinement. Doubtless, the 
Egyptian children pronounced the word (BeKo^, 
because it approached as nearlj^ as possible to 
the bleating^ of the goat by which they had been 
suckled. 

Had there ever been an innate organic lan- 
guage, it is quite certain that it must have left 
some traces ; for, as Dr. Latham observes, '^ lan- 
guage (as an instrument of criticism in ethnology) 
is the most permanent of the criteria of human 

* "On a tres judiciensement remarque sur celle-ci," says M. 
Nodier, "que la seule induction qui en resultat naturellement, 
fort concluante pour la langue primitive et im modifiable des 
cheTres ne prouYoit rien en faveur de la premiere langue de 
riiomme ; puisque les dievres formoient elles-memes d'une maniere 
tres-distincte les deux articulations dont ces enfants avoient com- 
pose leur etroit Yocabulaire." Sir Gardner Wilkinson discredits 
the whole storr, and supposes that it originated among the Greek 
ciceroni in Egypt, because he thinks that children, unless arti- 
ficially instructed, would not have been able to get beyond the 
labial sound "be." (Rawlinson's 5e?'oc?o^iis, i. 251.) Surely this 
is merely a begging of the question. The fact that the inference 
from the experiment was one unfavourable to the national vanity 
of the Egyptians, is only one of the reasons which induce us to 
credit its reality. Larcher (ad loc.) rightly regards the os as merely 
the Greek teiTiination. 



THE OPJGIX OF LANGUAGE. 15 

relationships cleriyable from our moral constitu- 
tion." Talleyrand's ^'ickecl witticism, that *'' lan- 
guage was given us to conceal our thoughts," 
arose from the fact that it is used for that pur- 
pose on a thousand occasions. But although a 
man may '' coin his face into smiles,'" and utter a 
thousand honeyed words, his real sentiments will 
flash out sometimes in passionate gesture and 
rapid glance ; and just in the same way^ had there 
even been a language which was the organic 
expression of emotion, it is absolutely impossible 
that it should have wholly disappeared. That 
which is really implanted is for the most part 
unalterable. 

2. Seeing, then, that positive experiment, as 
well as other considerations, disprove the inneity 
of language, other philosophers beheved that it 
was simply conventional, and grew up gradually 
after a period of mutism. The Epicurean phi- 
losophy, deeply tainted with the error of man's 
slow and toilsome development from a savage and 
almost bestial * condition, gave the problem the 

* '•Mntum et turpe pecus." — Hor. Sat. i. 3. 99. Similar 
views are to be found in Diod. Sic. i. 1 ; Yitmv. Arckit. ii 1. 
'' Thrown as it were by chance on a confused and savage land, an 
orphan abandoned by the unknown hand that had produced him." 
— Volney. Epicurus thought that men spoke just as dogs bark, 

OVdLKU'S KlVOVlJL^VOl, 



16 Ay ESSAY OX 

hardest of all material solutions. This school 
found in Lucretius its most splendid exponent. 
and the poet accounts for the appearance of 
speech as the gradual and instinctiTe endeavour 
to supply a want.* In short, words came because 
they were required, much in the same way that, 
according to the theoiv f Lamarck, organic 
peculiarities are the result of habit and instinct, 
so that the crane acquired a l?r.r i:e?k and long 
legs by jDersevering attempts :: z^^. Lucretius 
comj)ares language to the widely diverse sounds 
which animals emit to express different sensations, 
and, scornfully rejecting tL^ t'::^: " :: :„t Xz-ne- 
giver, asserts repeatedly that — 

*' Utilitas* expressit unmiTMi, remnL." 

It was generally believed by this school that 
man originally acquired the feculty of speech Try 
an observation of the sounds of nature. The 
cries of animals, " the hollow murmurii. . :„ . 
and silver rain," the sighing of the* woods. 



*LiicieLT.10l::-l :; Tie L : 


able Iteaniyand izi, l : _ iie: z^ 


cTii^f" ^'tTrrtlTT :i:r lil}.:t ^It-tl: ; -, 


^::" :.;::. r::L'':';--^ 


i/>-^:w:. x/tii. Ti. J.V. 



THE OEIGIX OF LANGUAGE. 17 

** The toLgue of forests green and iowery wilds," 

these, it seems, were man's ^ teachers in the power 
of articulation. 

** The joyons birds shrouded in cheerful shade, 
Their notes unto the voice attempted sweet : 
Th' angelical soft tremhling Toices made 

To th' instroments divine respondence meet, 

With the base murmurs of the water's fall ; 

The water's fall with difiFerence discreet, 

Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call ; 

The gentle warbling wind low answered to all." t 

Man, too, would endeavour to take his part in 
the divine harmony ; he would translate into 
living and intelligent utterances the dim and 
suhlime music of this unconscious hymn. 

Like most theories that have met with any 
amount of acceptance, this belief contains a germ 

* He began 

'' In murmurs which his first endeavoring tongue 
'Caught infant-like from the far-foamed sands." 

An extremely curious Esthonian legend (the only one which 
Grimm has discovered bearing any resemblance to the Bab^el- 
dispersion) seems to involve the same conception. God, seeiag 
that population was too crowded, determined to disperse men, by 
giving to each nation a distinct tongue. Accordingly, he placed on 
the fire a caldron full of water, and made the different races 
successively approach, who appropriated respectively the various 
sounds of the hissing and singing water. — Grimm, p. 28. Others 
have compared with it the Mexican legend about the doves. See 
Winer, BihUsches JReahjorterh, s. v. Sjprache. 

f Spenser's Fa'tne Queen. 

c 



18 AN ESSAY ON 

of truth. It originated from the onomatopoeic 
character of a large part of all languages. 
But we reject the conclusion di^awn from this 
fact. That man produced a large or very large 
part of his vocabulary by an imitation of natural 
sounds is entirely true, but that the idea of 
speech was created in him by the hearing of 
those sounds we believe to be eminently false. 
This theory, however, found especial favour 
among the philosophers of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, except that with them a mysterious con- 
vention seemed not even to require this natural 
basis. Maupertuis, Condillac, Kousseau, Yolney, 
Nodier, Herder, Monboddo, and Dr. Smith,* all 
seem to believe in an original time when a few 
intonations, joined to gesture and expression of 
the face, sufficed for the wants of nascent 
humanity, and formed, in fact, a natural language ; 
but in course of time this was found inadequate, 
and so " on convintjt on s'arrangea a Taimable, 
et ainsi fut etablile langage artificiel ou articule." 
According to Monboddo the steps of the process 

* For assertions of the conventional character of language, see 
Arist. Trepl 'EpiJLTjyeias, ii. 1. Plato, Craf. ad in. Harris, Hermes, 
iii. 1. Locke, iii. 1 — 8. Fenelon, Lettre sur les occupations de 
VAcad. § 3. (These are quoted at length by Charma, p. 208.) 
Smith, Theory of the Moral Sentiments^ ii. 364. Grimm, 39, 40. 
Lersch, passim, + Renan, p. 78. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 19 

were briefly as follows : — 1, Inarticulate cries ; 
2, Gestures ; 3^ Imitative sounds ; 4, An artificial 
language, formed by convention, and resulting 
from the necessities of the race. This language 
was originally poor and defective, but developed 
into richness, just as (to quote the simile of Ade- 
lung) the canoe of the savage has grown into the 
floating titj^ of modern nations. All other con- 
jectures are, however, eclipsed by Dr. Murray's 
derivation of all the languages of Europe from 
nine onomatopoeic syllables. These wondrous 
vocables^ were: — 1, Ag ; 2, Bag; 3, Dwag ; 
4, Cwag; 5, Lag; 6, Mag; 7, Nag; 8, Eag; 
9, Swag ! ! ! M. Eenan (who believes that all the 
parts of speech existed implicitly in the primitive 
language) may well remark that of all theories 
this is '' the most false, or rather the least rich in 
truth;" and it may be known by its fruits, for the 
natural inference from it is either '^ that t thought 

* See Wiseman, p. 54. TMs theory of the development of 
human language required the supposition of an indefinite period 
of human existence; but even if this be freely admitted, it is 
impossible to prove the jlrst step by which unarticulated sounds, 
the merely passive echoes of blind instincts or outward phenomena, 
could develop into the expression of thought. See Bunsen, ii. 76. 
It would have been marvellous indeed, if man had by the mere 
possession of vocal cries, not differing from those of animals, been 
able to raise himself from the utterances of instinct and appetite to 
express the emotions of admiration, hope, and love. See Xodier* 
Notions, p. 14. t Bunsen, ii. 130, 



20 AN ESSAY ON 

is merely an affection of perishable matter {ma- 
terialism), or that both are indiscriminately acci- 
dents of the one divine substance of the universe 
(pantheism).'' It is true that language, though 
not the result of convention, tends to become * 
conventional in the process of time, but this very 
tendency is often a mark of decay and ruin, and 
a language is a noble and powerful instrument of 
thought in proportion as it keeps in view the 
motives and principles which originated the w^ords 
of which it is composed. 

8. The third main theory, which has found 
numberless supporters, is, that language is due to 
direct revelation. The tenacitj^ of this belief was 
mainly due to the violent reaction of the spiri- 
tualist school in the nineteenth century against 
the systematising scepticism of their predecessors. 
It was warmly adopted by MM. de Bonald, de 
Maistre, De Lammenais, and others, and was in 
one sense a step forwards, for it recognised at 
least that *' divine f spark which glows in all 

* Tims words and phrases repeatedly acquire a conventional 
meaning for a generation, and then recur to their old sense. 
Almost every sect, every profession, and even every family, have 
certain words in use to which they attach a peculiar and special 
meaning, which is sometimes unintelligible to others. M. Cousin 
has been unable to discover the meaning which the Port-Hoyalists 
attached to the word *' machine." See Charma, p. 209. 

t Wilhelm von Humboldt, Lettre aM.A bel Remusat. Paris, 1827. 



THE OEIGIX OF LANGUAGE. 21 

idioms even the most imperfect and uncultivated/' 
But this theory must likewise be rejected. It 
raises * men to the level of gods, as much as the 
former theory had degraded them to the rank of 
beasts. '* Spiritualism contradicts nature, as 
materialism contradicts mind. It has reality and 
history against it as much as its opposite." » 

This view opens considerations of such im- 
portance that we must subject it to a still more 
careful discussion. 

Vv^e object, in the first place, to the difficulty 
and obscurity of the phrase. In one sense,-^ 
indeed — if we take it metaphorically^ — it is 
perhaps the most exact expression to describe 
the wonderful apparition of human speech, which 
it rightly withdraws from the sphere of vulgar 
inventions. Language, as an immediate product of 

* Grimm, § 28. 

+ In the following ohservations, I quote tlie thoughts of M. 
Eenan, pp. SI — S3. I have not nsed inyerted commas, hecanse I 
hare often transposed and abbreviated his actual words. Very 
similar are the excellent remarks of Nodier, which are too apposite 
to be omitted. ''On ne me soupconnera pas d'etre d'assez 
manvais gciit pour avoir attendu a snbstitner mes theories anx 
faits de revelation. . . Je crois fermement que la parole a ete donnee 
a rhomme, comme je le crois de toutes les facultes que la creation a 
reparti entre les creatures. Le seal point sur lequel j'ose differer 
des casuistes du son litteral, c'est que ce don ne me paroit pas 
avoir consiste dans la communication d'un systeme lexicologique 
t fait, &c." — Notions de Linguistique, p. 9. 



22 AN ESSAY ON 

human powers^, might perhaps, with more safety, 
be attributed to the Universal Cause, than to the 
particular action of human libert3^ If by reve- 
lation be intended the spontaneous play of the 
human faculties, in this sense, God, having en- 
dowed man with all things requisite for the dis- 
covery of language, may, with near approximation 
to truth, be called its Author; but then, why 
make use of an expression so indirect and liable 
to be misunderstood, when others more natural 
and more philosophical might have been found 
to indicate the same* fact? 

But, unhappily, M. de Bonald and others who 
urged this viev/ took the expression literally, and 
made it not scientific but theological ; not a dis- 
interested! and independent conclusion drawn 

* A beautiful illustration of Herder's will help to show our 
meaning. *' Observe," he says, ^'this tree with its vigorous 
trunk, its magnificent crown of verdure, its branches, its foliage, 
its flowers, its fruits, raising itself upon its roots as on a throne. 
Seized with admiration and astonishment, you exclaim, ^It is divine, 
divine ! ' Now observe this little seed ; see it hidden in the earth, 
then pushing out a feeble germ, covering itself with buds, clothiDg 
itself with leaves ; you will again exclaim, ^ It is divine ! ' but in 
a manner more worthy and more intelligent." 

+ Nothing has been more fatally prejudicial to the progress of 
science than a theological bias in its votaries ; and nothing more 
fatal to the peace of true discoverers than its ignorant tyranny. 
Adelung shows true wisdom in prefacing his Mithridates with the 
statement, *^Ich habe keine Lieblingsmeinung, keine Hypothese 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 23 

from induction, but a mere dogma of faith to be 
forced (like so many other false excrescences of 
theological tradition) upon the conscience of all 
Christians. In general, those who maintain the 
literal revelation of language, and reject its 
human origin, are the direct successors of those 
theologians who have so long opposed every dis- 
covery in science, and rejected the plainest de- 
ductions of geometry and logic. They intrude 
into a sphere in which they have no knowledge 
and no place; their arguments are neither 
scientific nor reasonable ; they are not reasons 
but assertions ; not conclusions but idle and 
groundless prejudices. It has been well said 
that they pertain to an order of ideas and inte- 
rests which science repudiates, and with which 
she has nothing to do. Ignorance has no claim 
to a hearing even when she speaks ex cathedra. 

Now what is meant by such an expression as 
the revelation of language rigorously understood? 
If, for instance, we take it materially, if we 
understand it to mean that a voice from heaven' 
dictated to men the names of things — such a 
conception is so grossly * anthropomorphic, it is 

zum Gninde zu legen. Noah's Arche ist mir eine Verschloss«ne 

Burg, und Babylon's Sclmtt bleibt vor mir vollig in seiner Ruhe." 

* It seems to me, however, that Grimm's special arguments on 

this subject are weak (p. 26) ; he is clearly right in pointing out 



24 AX ESSAY ON 

SO utterly at yariance vrith all scientific explana- 
tion, it is so irreconcileably opposed to all our 
ideas of the laws of natuiT, that it needs no 
refutation for one who is in the least degree 
initiated into the methods of modern criticism* 
Besides, as M. Cousin^ has remarked, •'"'it only 
removes the difficulty a step backwards without 
resolving it. For signs divinely invented would 
for us not be signs but things, which we should 
have been subsequently obliged to elevate into 
signs by attaching to them certain significations.'' 
The revealed ^Herm" would be a useless encum- 
brance unless it corresponded with some well 
understood conception; and therefore if words 
were revealed, conceptions must also have been 
implanted; and we are thus driven to the 
absurdity of supposing that anterior to all expe- 
rience, we knew that which experience {i. e. ant 
actual relation of intelligence with that which is 
the object of intelligence) alone could teach us. 

We have already said that these modern 
spiritualists considered the revelation of lan- 
guage to be a truth involved by the narrative of 

the fatility of sncli conjectures as tliose of Lessing, that language 
was made known to man by intercourse with intermediate spirits. 
(Lessing, Sdmratl. Schriften, Bd. 10.) 

* Preface aux CEuvres Philos. de Maine de Biran^ i\. p. xt. 

i* Charma, Essai sur le Langage, p. 129. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 25 

Genesis. In this they were the slaves of a false 
and narrow exegesis, which had not even the 
poor excuse of being literal. AVhat is the true 
meaning of the sacred writer we shall endeavour 
to show further on ; but we cannot here abstain 
from again uttering a strong protest against the 
barrier placed in the way of all honest scientific 
inquiry by the timid prejudices of that class which 
tyrannises over public oi^inion. When shall we 
learn to acquiesce practically in the belief which 
theoretically the most orthodox have long ex- 
pressed, that it is a needless incongruity to look 
in the Bible for scientific truths which it does 
not profess to reveal? ''Such* an attempt," it 
has been well said, ''has been a perversion of 
the purpose of a divine revelation, and cannot 
lead to any physical truth,''' 

Honesty all the more imperiously demands 
this remark, because here, as in a thousand other 
places, perverted by system and ignorance, we 
believe that the Bible rightl}' understood contains 
(not precise dogmas, but) the general indications 
of a sublime truth; and because it may be shown 

* Dr. TTliewell, Hist, of Tad. Science, iii. 504. A liost of 
eminent authorities, from Bacon down to Sir Jolin Herscliel. have 
said tlie same thing ; — hitherto, alas, in vain ! See HerscheFs 
Letter to Dr. Pye Smith, jMilFs Dissert, i. 435—461. Kenan, 
Hist. Eel. xxvii. Charma, p. 248. 



26 AX ESSAY OX 

that in this particular instance its records accu- 
rately agree ivitli the results of careful and 
lahorioiis inquiry. Here, as often, the Bible 
does not clash with the conclusions of science, 
if taken to imply no more than what it categori- 
cally asserts. But the Bible is not the only 
source of information open to us, and if we are 
ever in any way to fill up *' the vast lacunas 
which characterise that gigantic and mysterious 
epitaph of humanity engraved in the first chap- 
ters of Genesis,'' we must do so not by ignorant 
and dogmatic assertions, but by humble sincerity 
and patient research. 

If, then, language were revealed, the Bible is 
not only silent on such a revelation, but dis- 
tinctly implies the reverse. We shall examine 
the narrative of Genesis (ii. 19, 20) farther on; 
but we must here stop to observe that where the 
Deity is represented as talking to Adam and 
other patriarchs, such passages must not be sup- 
posed to have any bearing on the question, as it 
is quite clear that they are only intended for an 
expressive anthropomorphism.* Even Luther, 

* St. Gregory of Xyssa lias expressed himself on this subject 
vritli startling freedom of thought. He alludes with ii'onic jDity 
to those vrh.0 speak of the Deity as the fabricator of Adam's 
language, an opinion T^-hich he expressly calls a sottish and 
ridiculous vanity, quite T\-orthy of the extravagant presumption 



THE ORiaiX OF LANGUAGE. 27 

in his Commentarv on Genesis, goes out of his 
way to prove that nothing material is intended 
in such phrases as God's '^ speaking to " Adam, 
and that it would be as strange to suppose that 
they imply any* revelation of language, as it 
would be to infer the revelation of writing from 
the mention of the stone tables ^' written by the 
linger of God." Writing also has been attributed 
directly to God's external gift, although, as in 
the case of language, there is the clearest proof 
of its human origin and gradual perfectionment. 

But we must not omit one or two positive 
arguments against this theory. 

1. Had language been revealed, mankind at 
first would have been better situated than any of 
their posterity; and such a disposition is unlike 
the ordinary course of God's just dealings. 

of tlie Jews. And on tlie subject of Ba"bel, lie says, *'TIie con- 
fusion of tongues must "be necessarily attributed to the vnll of 
God according to the tbeologic point of view, but according to the 
truth of history it is tbe work of man." — Contra Eunomium^ 
Or. xii. p. 782. Nodier, p. 6Q. St. Augustin distinctly implies 
tbe same tbing. — De Ord. ii. 12. 

* Since writing the above, I bave met with another Biblical 
argument in favour of the Revelation of Language, drawn from 
Gen. i. 5. koX rh ,aev <p5os ihcdXeor^y 6 Oeos Tji^epap, ro Se (TKotos 
vvKTOL' iirei TOL ye S.j^Opcoir-os ovk clj/ fjdei KaXelv rh (peas i]iJ.epav lj 
rh (jk6to3 vvKTa, aAA' ov^\ fxey ra AofTra, €i /llt] tv^v ovouaaiav 
d\r,(p€L airh rod Troirjcrayros avra Qeov. — Theophil. ad A utohjc. ii. 



18 AN ESSAY OX 

2. So far from being '' a pale image and feeble 
echo of splendours which have passed away from 
the scene of earth," each human language bears 
in itself the most distinct traces of growth and 
progress — the marks of a regular development 
in accordance with definite laws — the successive 
traces of infancy, youth, maturity, and manhood. 
Though many existing languages, and even those 
of some savage nations are but '' degraded and 
decaying fragments of nobler formations," yet 
there are proofs as decisive that they rose to 
gTadual perfection, as that they subsequently fell 
from perfection to decay. 

3. If the spiritualist theory were true, it would 
be a most natural inference that the spiritual 
and abstract signification of roots is also the 
original one. But such an assumption (although 
it is made b}^ Frederic Schlegel), '4s contra- 
dicted by the history of every language of the 
world." 

4. It is equally improbable that God who 
revealed the primitive language, or man who 
received it, should have snu'ered it (divine, as on 
this supposition it must have been) to degenerate 
into barbarous and feeble jargons. 

18. ed. Wolf. p. 140. I present tliis argunient witliout reply to 
any one who is convinced l^y it. 



THE OEIOIN OF LANGUAGE. 29 

5. ''The human faculties are coinpetent to the 
formation of * language." It is therefore totally 
unlike God's methods, as observed in His works, 
to give directly what can be evolved medAatelij. 
For there is clearly no waste in the economy of 
Nature, no prodigality in the display of miracles. 
In the words of Grimm, ''it seems contrary to 
the wisdom of God to impose the restraint of a 
created form on that which was destined to a 
free historic development." At any rate, as a 
fact we can historically trace the development of 
language from a very small nucleus, and this 
being the case the supposition of any previous 
revealed language is a groundless and improbable 
hypothesis.! 

Further arguments will appear as we proceed ; 
but we must now point out the true meaning of 
the statement in Genesis, that '' God brought all 
livino* creatures to Adam to see tchat he ivoiild 

o 

call them; and whatsoever Adam called every 

* Stewart, Phil, of the Mind, iii. 1. 

i* ''This metiiod of referring 'w^ords immediately to God as their 
framer, is a sliort cut to escape inquiry and explanation. It 
saves tlie pMlosoplier mucli trouble, but leaves mankind in great 
ignorance, and leads to great error. Non dignus vindice nodus, 
God having furnished man with senses, and with organs of articu- 
lation, as he has also with water, lime, and sand, it should seem 
no more necessary to form the words for man, than to temper the 
mortar." — Divers, of Purley, Pt. i. ch. 2. 



30 AN ESSAY ON 

living creature that was the name thereof.'' 
Now, merely remarking (bj^ way of limitation) 
that the writer clearly supposed his own language 
to be that of Paradise, and that there is here no 
attempt to account for all t language, because he 
is speaking of a certain class of words only — we 
find in this narrative a profound verity clothed in 
a most beautiful and appropriate symbol: 'We 
see man as the true nomenclator — man acting hy 
his own peculiar faculties under the guide of the 
Deity. Philosophy J could find no more pei'fect 
figure to express her conclusions than this — God 
teaching man to speak as a father would a son.' 
But to give this simple narrative a material 
explanation is to falsify at once both its letter 
and its spirit. On the other hand, " to say with 
the theologians that God had created language § 

* Gen. ii. 19, 20. 

f e. g. There is no liint oi grammar, tlie very blood of language. 
*'Une Langue n'est pas une seule collection des mots." — Cousin, 
Cours de 1829, iii. 212. 

t Renan, p. 85. See an eloquent passage of ScHegers to the 
same effect, quoted in Wiseman's Led. i. 108. Pythagoras pro- 
bably had some vague sentiment of the kind v/hen he said that 
*' the namegiver" was both the most ancient and the most rational 
of men. The Egyptians worshipped Theuth as the Regulator of 
Language ; and the Chinese referred its origin to their great mys- 
terious King Fohi. See Cic. Tusc. Disp. i. 28. Lersch, die 
Sprachphilos. der Alien, Bonn, 1838, i. 23—29. 

§ Bunsen, i. 49. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 31 

as he had created man, and that language is not 
the act and ^ork of man/' is to contradict not 
only r eason ^JbuUJie Bible too. For be it ob- 
served, that the Bible distinctly confirms our 
arguments by saying, not that God named the 
animals, but that Adam named them, and that 
whatsoever he named every living creature that 
was the name thereof. 

In short, language is " only divine in propor- 
tion to the divinity of our nature and our soul;" 
it is only a gift of God because the faculty 
naturally resulted from the physical and spiritual 
organism which God had created. This seems a 
more natural and philosophic supposition than 
the belief that even the embri/onic germ of lan- 
guage was revealed. The exercise of the faculty 
in the original utterance of primitive words has 
ceased to be called into play because it has 
ceased to be required. We cannot now invent 
original words because there is no longer any 
necessity for doing so. In the same way— as is 
well known — a deaf mute when once instructed 
in an artificial language loses the quick instinc- 
tive power of creating intelligible natural signs. 

We conclude, then, that language is neither 
innate and organic ; nor a mechanical invention ; ^ 
nor an external gift of revelation ; — -but a natural 



32 AS ESSAY ON 

faculty STviftly developed by a povrerful instinct. 

the result of intelligence ^ and human freedom 
which have no place in purely organic - functions. 
It was '•' the living product of the whole " inner 
man." It was "not§ a gift bestowed ready 
formed to man. but something^ coming from him- 
self."^ It is "'•' essentially human ; it owes to oui' 
full liberty both its origin and its progi'ess : it is 
oui^ history, our heritage.'' Objectively con- 
sidered, it was the result of organism: subjec- 
tively, the product of intelligence. It was ^* a 
primitive intuition, impersonal and ye: ::.f.;.r:::rd 
by individual genius;*' in a word, its character 
is '"'at once ^ objective and subjective, at once 
individual and general, at once free and neces- 
sary, at once human and divine." 

That such a conclusion,^ however much it may 



* The fack th^t man is a social animal (fior waXanAw) wMch 

has been so strangely "urged Ly the adFOcates of a rerealed 
language, frcia LaiLsxtiis ii-^^n :; 11 ^ Bonald and tie A": be 
Combalot, inn: — 7 z::":: TtS :r :::: li: : :i.:^-$i3n. 
+ Heyse, Si ^ _ ; /:. 3 :\ 

§ Wil. vcn HTiiLoadt. 
II Grimm. 



THE OEIGIX OF LANGUAGE. 33 

seem to savour of a weak eclecticism by combin- 
ing all former theories, is vet in profound accord- 
ance with all the ascertained facts of language 
we shall hope to prove in the following chapter. 

Jleinungen der Gelehniien von Vrsfrunge der Sj^ya.QrLen. Magdel). 
1733. 



34 AN ESSAY ON 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE IDEA 
OF SPEECH. 

' ' Speech, is morning to tlie mind ; 
It spreads tlie "beauteous images abroad, 
"Which else lie dark and buried in the soul." 

Feom abstract and a priori considerations, we 
have arrived at the conclusion that language was 
achieved or created by the human race, by the 
unconscious or spontaneous exercise of divinely 
implanted powers; that it was a faculty analo- 
gous to and closely implicated with that of 
thought, and, like thought, developing itself 
with ^ the aid of time. The idea of speech was 
innate, and the evolution of that idea may be 
traced in the growth and history of language. 
It is most important to ha^ a clear conception 
of the fact that this development did not result 

* See Franck's Dictionnaire des Sciences Philosophiques, Art. 
Signes, I must here again caution the reader that the view here 
supported is not the conventional theory of language condemned in 
the last chapter, although, it might easily become so in the hands 
of a person inclined to look at the physiological rather than the 
psychological aspects of the question. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 35 

from an atomistic* reunion of parts, but from 
the vitality derived from an inward principle^ 
Language was formed by a process not of crystal- 
line accretion but of germinal development. 
Every essential part of language existed as com- 
pletely (although only implicitly) in the primitive 
germ, as the petals of a flower exist in the bud 
before the mingled influences of the sun and the 
air have caused it to unfold. 

Our belief thus arrived at — viz., that language 
was an achievement of the human genius which 
God implanted in the primeval man, a develop- 
ment of the faculty with which he endowed our 
race — does not at all necessitate the belief in a 
period when man was unable to communicate 
with man. The exercise of the faculty may have 
been rapid in that young and noble nature to a 
degree which now we cannot even conceive. A 
few imitative roots, uttered under the guidance 
of a divine instinct, and aided by the play of 
intelligence in movement and feature, would with 
wonderful ease grow into a language sufl&cient 
for the needs of a nascent humanity, and the 
living germ would soon bud and bourgeon by 
the very law of its production. Even if we were 

* This is an expression of F. ScUegel's {Philos. Vorlesungen, p^ 
78 — 80). Ilenan also quotes the authority of Humboldt and Goethe. 

D 2 



36 AN ESSAY ON 

compelled to believe that this language was at 
first of the scantiest character, we see in this 
supposition nothing more absurd than in the 
certainty that knowledge and science, philosophy 
and art, are the slow, gradual, and toilsome con- 
quests of an ever ^progressive race. It is now 
well understood that even the use of the senses 
has to be learnt, — that it is only by practice that 
we are able to discriminate distances in the 
variously-coloured surface which is all that we 
really see. Why should it then be unnatural to 
suppose that speech also was at first only impli- 
citly bestowed on us, and that it required time 
and experience to develop fully the implanted 
capacity ? 

How far the growth of language was affected 
by external circumstances, — as, for instance, by 
the impress of individual minds, by the aristo- 
cracy or even autocracy of philosophic bodies, by 
the influence of sex, by the variations of climate, 
by the convulsions of history, by the slovv^ change 
of religious or political convictions, and even by 
the laws of euphony and organisation, we may 
consider hereafter ; but we must first of all enter 
on two very interesting preliminary inquiries, viz., 
1, How did words first come to be accepted as 
signs at all ? and, 3, By what processes did men 



THE OEIGIX OF LANGUAGE. 37 

hit upon the words themselves ? Or, to put the 
questions differently : 1, How did various modu- 
lations of the human voice acquire any signifi- 
cance by being connected with outward or inward 
phenomena ? and, 2, What special causes led in 
special cases to the choice of some particular 
modulations rather than of any other ? 

I am well aware that these questions may 
appear ridiculous to any one who is entirely 
unaccustomed to these branches of inquiry ; and 
they may possibly be inclined to set the whole 
matter at rest by a dogmatism or a jeer. They 
will say perhaps : 

** Here babbling Insigbt shouts in Nature's ears 
His last conundrum of the orbs and spheres ; 
There Self-inspection sucks his little thumb, 
With ' Whence am I ?' and ^ Wherefore did I come ?' " * 

With readers of such a temperament it is idle to 
reason, nor do w^e expect that, while the w^orld 
lasts, ignorance will cease to take itself for know- 
ledge, and denounce what it cannot understand. 
To others we will merely say that these inquiries 
have occupied, and are still occupying in an 

* *'Seht, es ist schwer zu denken auf welche Art man denkt. 
, , . Ich denke, und mit dem Zeuge, womit ich denke, soil ich 
denken wie dieses Zeug beschaffen sei," &c. — Tieck, Blauljarty 
act. ii. sc. 1. 



3S AX ESSAY ON 

increasing degree, some of the most profound and 
sober intellects in Europe, and that (in the words 
of Plato) •' wise men do not usually talk non- 
sense.' 

"\Vith this remark, let us proceed to our first 
question : How came sounds — mere vibrations of 
the atmosphere — to be accepted as signs, i. e. to 
be used as words ? 

But (as one inquiry leads us back, perpetually, 
to another, even until " all things end in a 
mystery ''), we must here again pause for a 
moment to ask what is a word ? So vast an 
amount has been written in answer to this 
inquiry, that it is obviously impossible to do 
more than state the conclusion* we adopt, with a 
mere hint as to the ground on which we adopt it. 

Home Tooke maintained that words are "'•' the 
names of things," a definition most obviously in- 
adequate ; others have called them '' the pictures 
of ideas," t and although this definition is not 
without its value, yet the systematic perversion of 
the word '"'idea,"" renders it insufficient. Harris 

* We are. for instance, ouliged entirely to pass over tiie qnestion 
as to the Primnni Cognitum, on Avliich see Sir "W. Hamiltons 
Lectures, ii. 3:9—331. 

f •• One miglit be tempted io cad Language a kind of Picture of 
the Universe, vrheie the ^ords are as the figures and images of all 
f particulars." — Harris's Henms, p. 330. This is something like 



THE OEIGIN OF LAXGUAGE. 39 

devotes a chapter to establishing the definition 
that *' Words are the symbols of ideas, both 
general and particular; yet, of the general, 
primarily, essentially, and immediately ; of the 
particular only secondly, accidentally, and me- 
diately." But this is very questionable and 
cumbrous ; and, on the whole, we believe that no 
better definition can be given than that of the 
late Mr. Garnett,* that words represent '' concep- 
tions founded on ^perceptions,'' or ''that words 
express the relations of things." They do not 
and cannot express " an intrinsic meaning, con- 
stituting them the counterparts and equivalents 
of thought. They are nothing more, and can be 
nothing more, than signs of relations, and it is a 
contradiction in terms to aSrm that a relation 
can be inherent." '' Our knowledge of beings," 
says M. Peisse, t ^' is purely indirect, hmited, rela- 
tive ; it does not reach to the beings themselves 
in their absolute reality and essences, but only to 
their accidents, their modes, their relations, their 
limitations, their differences, their qualities ; all 

Plato's curious notion that words are a iJ.iij.r](ns of external things. 
— Heyse, System, s. 24. kotK^yai yap ra ovS^ara .... '€uc6<ri rav 
oparctiv. — Heraclitus, ap. Ammonium ad Arist, de Tnterjp. p. 24. 
Democritns called them aydXyiara (pcovfjeyTa. 

* Garnett's Essaijs, p. 281—341. 

t Quoted by Mr. Garnett, p. 283. 



40 AN ESSAY OX 

wliich are manners of conceiving and knowing, 
which not only do not impart to knowledge the 
absolute character which some persons attribute 
to it, but even positively exclude it. Matter (or 
existence, the object of sensible perception), only 
falls within the sphere of our knowledge through 
its qualities ; mind only by its modifications ; 
and these qualities and modifications are all that 
can be comprehended and expressed in the object. 
The object itself, considered absolutely, remains 
out of the reach of all perception." It is an 
obvious inference that, as we can only talk of 
what we know, and as we can only know the rela- 
tions of things, words are the medium of express- 
ing (not the nature of things, which is incog- 
nisable), but the observed 7'elations hetween things. 
They are revelations not of the outward, but of the 
inward, — not of the universe, but of the thoughts 
of man. 

Leaving to metaphysicians all further discus- 
sion of this question, we again recur to our 
inquiry. How came words to be accepted as signi- 
ficant of these relations ? Thought* and speech 

* Grimm, 29 — 31. Compare Heyse, System, s. 28. *' Nur 
was gedacM ist, kacn gesproclieii werden ; und das klar gedaclite 
ist nothwendig auch anspreclibar." What St. Paul saw in his 
rapture was only unutterable because it recalled no human 
analogon. (2 Cor. xii. 4.) 



THE OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 4] 

are inseparably connected ; the very root of the 
word Man^" implies, in Sanskrit, " a thmking 
being," and it is well known that there is a close 
connection between " ratio " and " oratio," and 
that aXoya (coa means animals, not only '' without 
speech," but " without reason." Eloquence, in 
fact, is genius, and the greatest poet or orator is 
he who has most command over his native tongue. 
It has even been a question with some philo- 
sophers whether thought is ijossible without 
speech, — whether, for instance, blind-deaf-mutes 
i (like the' American girl, Laura Bridgman), are 
capable! of exercising the faculty of reason until 
they have been taught an artificial method of 
expression ? 

* ManudscHa, Goth. Manniska, Germ. Mensch ; from the root 
man, *' to think." Compare (^pafe:;/, * Ho speak," and (ppd^ccrdaiy 
**to think." — Heyse, s. 40. Turner ad Herod, ii. 7. 

t '* Speech, "says Humboldt, *'is the necessary condition of the 
thought of the individual." The statement should at least be 
qualified by the word "now." For some allusions to this interest- 
ing discussion, see Archbishop Whately's Logic, ch. ii. M. de 
Bonald assumed the reverse : * ' L'homme pense sa parole avant de 
parler sa pensee." See, too, Mill's Logic, ii. 201. Charma, p. 134. 
Of course the short-hand of human intelligence is too infinitely 
rapid and abbreviated i'or us to be always able to read it off with 
facility ; or, as Air. Tennyson expresses it, 

'' Thought leapt out to wed with thought, 
Ere thought could wed itself to speech ; " 
but we are inclined to believe that without some signs (not 
necessarily words— see Charma, Essai sur le Langage, p. 50) 



42 AN ESSAY ON 

Certain it is that the child begins to speak 
when it begins to think, and that its first intelli- 
gent perception of relations is followed by its first 
articulate utterances. "We may illustrate this 
remark in an interesting manner. We find it 
stated in the Jadschurveda, that the first words 
uttered by the first man were, " I am myself," 
and that, when called, he answered, " I am he." 
With all due deference to the ancient philo- 
sopher who held this belief, we may safely assert 
that such a thing was impossible without some 
special interposition ; for the growth of a sense 
of individuality is extremely slow, and comes to 
children long after their main perceptions. A poet 
— in whom nothing is more remarkable than his 
profound learning and metaphysical accm'acy — 
truly says : 

*' The baby new to earth and sky, 

What time his tender palm is prest 
Against the circle of the breast, 
Hath never thought that ' This is I : ' 



thought could not exist. When -vve cannot express what we mean, the 
reason probably is that we have no clear meaning. "Die Sprache 
ist nichts anderes als der in die Erscheinnng tretende Gedanke, 
iind beide sind innerlich nur eins und das selbe.''^ — Becker, - 
Organism, der Spradie, p. 2. "Sans signes nons ne penserions 
presque pas." — Destutt de Tracy, Ideologie, pt. xvii. Plotiaus; 
distinctly asserts the contrary. Tb h)) XoyL^o/bLepou ttjs '*pvxns 
ovdei/os irphs rh Aoyi^eadai he6p.evQV aco/jLariKov opydvou, — Enmead, 
T. 1, ch. 10 



THE OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 43 

But as he grows he gathers ranch, 
And learns the use of ' I ' and * me,' 
And finds * I am not what I see, 

And other than the things I touch.' " * 

And this gives us at once the true explanation 
I of the fact, that it is some time before a child 
learns to regard itself as a subject, and therefore^ 
that it t objectises itself in all its language. It 
I would say, not " I want an apple," but " Charlie 
j wants an apple ; " not even '' give Jjie," — so fre- 
quently as ''give Charlie." When Hamlet signs 
himself as ' The machine that is to me Hamlet," 
he only shows, by an extreme instance, the 
■remarkable difficulty that a man always has in 
J mastering this very conception of individuality, 
', which the Hindoo philosophy would seem to 
'regard as a primitive intuition. 

By these remarks we have greatly cleared the 

^'way for our explanation of the manner in which 

words originated ; — an explanation I which is 

■* In Menioriam, 

+ See Harper, on the Force of the Greeh Tenses. 
I X Der Ursprung der Sprache, Berlin, 1851. We closely follow 
M. Eenan's exposition as given in his preface, pp. 31, sq. Heyse 
sums it up in one sentence, "Man kann mithin in dem Worte 
ein dreifaches Moment unterscheiden : 1. die Lautform ; 2. das 
dadurch bezeichnete in Sprachbewusstsein liegende Merkmal der 
Yorstellung ; 5. den reinen Begriff, welchen der denkende Geist 
in seiner Erhebung liber die Individuelle Yorstellungsweise bildet, 



44 AX ESSAY OX 

purely psychological, and -vrliicli was first promul- 
gated in this shape by M. Stein thai. 

Man has the faculty of interpretation, or of using 
words for signs, as completely as he has the 
faculties of sight and hearing ; and words are the 
means he employs for the exercise of the former 
faculty, just as the eye and the ear are employed \| 
as the organs of the latter. 

The power of speech depends on the power of 
abstraction, i. e., of transforming intuitions into 
ideas. Let us explain. At the sight of a horse 
galloping, or of a plain white with snow, the 
primitive man formed, at first, one undivided 
image ; the motion and the horse, the field and 
the snow, were unseparated. But, by language, the 
act of running was distinguished from the crea- 
ture that ran, and the colour separated from the 
thing coloured. Each of these two elements 
became fixed in an isolated word, and so the 
word dismembered the complete perception. But, 
from another point of view, the word is more 
extended than the presentation; e.g., the word'] 
" white " expresses not only an attribute of snow, 
but of all white objects; its meaning, then, 

und als dessen Zeiciien iliin gleiclifalls das Wort dienen muss." — 
Heyse, System, s. 160. 

* Gamier, Traite des facultes de VAme, KenaD, p. 90. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 45 

is more abstract and indeterminate than that of 
'' white snow." Instead of only embracing an 
existence, or an object in an accidental state, a word 
rej)resents the thing without its accidental cha- 
racters, which are removed by abstraction, and 
indicates it under all the circumstances in which 
it may be placed. 

The transformation, then, of intuitions into 
ideas, by the freedom and activity of the human 
intelligence, constitutes the essence of a word, 
although the speaker may be as unconscious of 
the process as he is of the organic mechanisms 
which give utterance to his thoughts. 

I. 'As for the conditions under which articulate 
language first appeared, M. Steinthal represents 
them as follows. At the origin of humanity the 
soul and the body were in such mutual depend- 
ence that all the emotions* of the soul had their 
echo in the body, principally in the organs of the 
respiration and the voice. This sympathy of 
soul and body, still found in the infant and the 
savage, was intimate and fruitful in the primitive 
man ; each intuition awoke in him an accent or 

* Motus animi. In the origin of language, the spontaneous 
awakening of a sense of the possibility of expressing thought by 
speech, was in point of fact simultaneous with the production of 
an objective Language as the material in which the awakened 
intelligence could find expression. Heyse, s. 47. 



46 AN ESSAY OX 

a sound.' This was the first step ; and in this fact 
lies the germ of truth contained in the doctrines 
of the analogists ; * since there must have been 
some reason in the nature of things, why certain 
impressions or feelings were connected with cer- 
tain sounds rather than with certain others. We 
may be totally unable to point out this con- 
nection in many cases, and even while recognising 
a natural relation between certain sounds of the 
human voice and certain material phenomena, we 
may deny the verj^ possibility of such a rela- 
tion between a spiritual phenomenon and its 
physical sign. And j^et we feel a strong repug- 
nance at allowing caprice ^ or chance to have any 
considerable share in the origin of language. 
It can, at least, be fairly argued that there is 
nothing purely arbitrary in the work of the divine 
Demiurgus. 

II. 'Another law, which played a no less 
essential part in the creation of language, was 
the association t of ideas. In virtue of this law, 
the sound which accompanied an intuition, asso- 
ciated itself in the soul with the intuition itself, so 
closely that the sound and the intuition presented 

* See ante. 

'\' On this law of assocIatioD, see Sir W. Hamilton's Lectures, 
i. 366. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 47 

themselves to the consciousness as iiisejmrahle, 
and vrere equally inseparable in the recollection/ 
This was the second step. 

III. Finally, the word became a middle term 
of reminiscence, a tach between the external 
object and the inward impression. " The sound* 
became a ivorcl by forming a bond between the 
image obtained by the vision, and the image 
preserved in the memory ; in other words, it 
acquired significance, and became an element of 
language. The image of the remembrance, and 
the image of the vision, are not wholly identical ; 
e.g., I see a horse ; no other horse that I have 
ever seen resembles it absolutely in colour, size, 
&c. : the general conception recalled by the word 
* horse' involves only the abstracted f attributes 
common to all the animals of the same genus. 
It is this collection of common attributes that 
constitutes the significance of the sound." 

Thus M. Steinthal attributes the appearance 
of language to the unconscious action of psycho- 

* Exclamations, natural interjections would probably be tbe first 
to acquire significance. 

t In some savage languages abstraction is at the lowest ebb. 
Thus, in Iroquois, tbere is no word for **good" in the abstract, 
but only words for '*a good man," &c. ; and in Mohican there is 
no verb for **I love," independent of the forms which involve 
the object of the affection, as "I love him," *'I love you." — 



48 AN ESSAY ON 

logical laws; and as these laws acted sponta- 
neously in the first human beings, it is quite 
clear that these speculations involve no approval 
of the untenable Epicurean belief in a long period 
of mutism and savageness. We cannot but 
think that the beauty, ingenuity, and simplicity 
of these views will commend them to general 
acceptance. 

"We may here give one or two passing hints of 
the way in which these laws were influenced by 
organism. 

One very simple fact is, that of course the 
impressions, &c., which come earliest would natu- 
rally be connected with the sounds that come 
earliest. For instance, the words for father and 
mother, which are alike half the world over, are, 
as we should have expected, formed of easy and 
simple"'^ syllables ; being indeed the first labial 
sounds of the infant lisping : had we found in 

Adelung's Mithrid, iii. b. p. 397. So again the Chinese in many 
cases cannot express the simple conception without a periphrasis, 
and have words for *^ elder "brother" and *' younger brother," but 
not for "brother." — Humboldt. 

* See Gesenius, Lehrgehdudej p. 479. Ewald's Hebrew Gram- 
mar, § 201. *' The Mandschou is most like the Semitic here ; in 
it the origin is still plainer, since ama means father, erne mother, 
according to the uniform distinction of a as the stronger, and e as 
the weaker vowel." — Renan, Hist, des Langues SeriiitiqueSy p. 
452. Kawlinson's Herodotus^ i. 481. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 49 

any of tliem the letters which represent late- 
coming and difficult sounds,^ we should have 
been justly surprised. 

Again, Grimmf has remarked that the more 
ancient a language is^ the more clearly do we 
find in it the distinction between masculine and 
feminine inflections. ''Nothing," adds M. Eenan, 
" proves it more strongly than the to-us-inexpli- 
cable tendency which led the primitive nations to 
suppose a sex in all beings, even inanimate ones. 
A language, formed in our days, would suppress 
the gendert in all cases, except perhaps, those 
where men and w^omen are concerned." This 
pecuharity is doubtless due to the influence of 
women. In ancient times, the life of woman was 
far more widely separated than now from that of 
men; and even in later days, when they were 
dwarfed in the isolation of the gynaeceum, we can 
easily understand how the peculiarities of their 
life would have influenced the language they 

* Similarly it has been obseiTed by M. Nodier tbat the most 
ancient names of God are composed only of the softest and simplest 
vowels (Notions, p. 15). This reminds us of the famous oracle, 
(ppd^€o rhu TTauTcou virarov Oehu ^jiyiev^ law. 

+ Uler den Vrsprung, kc, p. 35. 

X It is strange that the French language should not have 
adopted the same course as the EngHsh, in discarding this useless 
rag of antiquity. The influences which led to the decision of 
genders in any particular case were pm^ely fanciful. 



50 AN ESSAY ON 

employed. The difference between their idioms 
and those of men is still very incisive in some 
African dialects; and the fact that men in speak- 
ing to women are obliged to employ particular 
inflections, proves that those inflections must have 
been used by the women themselves. It is this 
which causes the strange difference between Sans- 
krit and Prakrit; in the Hindoo dramas, Sanskrit 
is used by the men, Prakrit by the women. 

But the difference is due to the difference of 
organisation. If ^'a" and '*i" are in all languages 
the vowels characteristic of the feminine, it is 
without doubt because those vowels are better 
suited to the feminine organ than the masculine 
sounds "o" and "ou." A Hindoo commen- 
tator, explaining the 10th verse of the Third 
book of Manou,* where it is commanded to 
give to women sweet and agreeable names, 
recommends that in these names the letter *^a" 
should predominate." 

It is observable, too, that the influence of cli- 
mate on language is in point of fact another 
result of the influence of organism. The idiom 
of Sybaris is not that of Sparta. The languages of 
the South are limpid, euphonic, and harmonious, 
as though they had received an impress from the 

* Eenan, p. 28. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 51 

transparency of their heaven, and the soft, sweet 
sounds of the winds that sigh among their woods. 
On the other hand, in the hirrients and gutturals, 
the burr and roughness of the Northern tongues, 
we catch an e.cho of the breaker bursting on their 
crags, and the crashing of the pine-branch over 
the cataract. Rousseau* has pointed to the fact 
that the languages of the rich and prodigal 
South, being the daughters of passion, are poetic 
and musical, while those of the North, the 
gloomy daughters of necessity, bear a trace of 
their hard origin, and express by rude sounds 
rude sensations. It is an additional argument 
against the existence of a language primitive, 
revealed, or innate, that every known language 
bears on itself the deep traces of predominant 
local influences. " It is for this reason that the 
confusion of tongues and the dispersion of nations 
are represented by Scripture as synchronous events 
in the magnificent history of Babel, which, per- 
haps, we may be j)ermitted to regard as one of 
those sublime parables so frequent in the sacred 
books. This was the opinion of the great 
Leibnitz." 

These are but easy illustrations of a wide and 
difficult subject; but the influence of organism 

* Housseau, Essai sur VOrigine des Langues. 

E 2 



52 AN ESSAY ON 

on language lias not j-et been very fully analysed, 
and many of the laws which philologists have 
advanced remain to some degree uncertain. Those 
who desire to follow the subject may find some 
very amusing illustrations in the. pages of M. 
Xodier, one of vrhich we have* relegated into the 
note. 

* Notions^ p. 24 sqq. The remarks on the labials are too 
amusing to be omitted. "Le bambin, le poupon, le marmot a 
trouve les trois labiales ; il bee, il baye, il balbutie, il begaye, il 
babille, il blatere, il bele, il bavarde, il braille, il boude, il bouqne, 
il bongonne sur une babiole, sur une bagatelle, sur une billeyesee, 
snr line betise, sur un bebe, sur nn bonbon, sur un bobo, sur le 
bUboquet pendu a I'etalage du bimbelotier. II nomme sa mere et 
son pere avec des mimologismes caressants, et quoiqu'il n'ait encore 
decouvert que la simple touche des levres, I'ame se meut deja dans 
les mots qu'il module au hasard. Ce Cadmus au maillot vient 
d'entrevoir un mystere aussi grand k lui seul que tout le reste de la 
creation. 1\ parle sa pensee." Want of space alone compels us to 
refrain from transcribing the remarks on the progress of infants 
and of society to the dentals. "We must say, however, that such 
speculations must be very sparingly indulged by sober philologists. 
Many of them, at first sight plausible, were refuted by Plato long 
ago in the Cratylm, and they lead to a grammatical mysticism 
which has been well exposed by M. Charma, Essai^ p. 213. 



THE ORIGIN OF LAXG-UAGE. 53 



CHAPTER III. 

THE LAWS OF SPECIAL SIGXIFICAXCE, OR THE 
CREATION OF ROOTS. 

*'Nommer par la mimolcgie, s'enricliir par la comparaison, les 
langiies n'ont pas d'antre moyen : elles ne sortent pas de la.'" — 
Nodier, p. 39. 

FRO^yi the general question as to tKe manner in 
which sounds acquired significance as icords, we 
proceed to the longer and wider inquiry as to 
the causes which led to the choice of sj^ecial 
sounds in special significations ; or, in other 
words, we shall consider the origin of roots.* 

When in the fisst chapter we proved that lan- 
guage was neither innate nor revealed, we proved 
implicitly that no words could be imrely arbi- 

* By roots Tve do not mean words used in tlie primitive 
language, but ratter *' skeletons of articulate sound." " Tliey are 
merely tlie fictions of grammarians to indicate the core of a group 
of related words." — Hensleigli Wedgwood's Etyinolog. Diet. p. iii. 
For some remarks on the nature of roots, see Donaldson's Kevj 
Cratyl, bk. iii. cb. 1. Ewald's Hebrew Gi-am. § 202. This naked 
kernel of a family of words is often best found in tbe youngest 
dialects, e.g. Icind. (child) from yiyvoy.a.L, genitum, &c.. Grimm, 
Deutsche Gramm, ii. 5. 3. Bopp. Ygl. Granim. s. 131. 



54 AN ESSAY ON 

trary.^ The historic character of language, — the 
fact that in innumerable cases we can distinctly 
trace the laws which presided at the genesis of any 
particular word, — strongly confirms our a priori 
conclusion. The inference to be deduced from the 
labours of all the best philologists, is that of Ihre, 
'^ Non ut fungi nascuntur Vocabula." We have 
no reason to believe that any elements of lan- 
guage were deduced from roots which of them- 
selves had no significance; and the more rigorous 
and extensive the analysis to which even inflec- 
tions are subjected, the more clear is the proof 
that they arise from the agglutination of separate 
and significant words. " We believe," says one 
of the ablest of modernt inquirers, '* that in 
language ex nihilo nihil Jit ; and we are at a loss 
to conceive how elements originally destitute of 

* One or two pliilosopliers (e.g. Kircher, Beclier, Dalgarno, 
Bp. Wilkins, Descartes, Leibnitz) have amused themselves with 
the invention of languages quite arbitrary, in which every word 
was to be accurately determined ; but no artificial language 
actually used has ever thus arisen. The Grerman rothwelsch, the 
Italian gei^go, the French narquois, the English ^^ thieves^ lan- 
guage,^^ the lingua franca which serves for commercial purposes 
on the shores of the Mediterranean, the strange jargon spoken by 
the Chinese and English at Hong Kong, &c., have all arisen from 
a corruption of existing languages by meta;^hors, new words, new 
meanings, derivation, composition, &c. See Leibnitz, Nouv. Essai 
sur V Entendement Humain^ iii. i. 2, 

i" Mr. Garnett, Essays, p. 105. Latham, Lect. on Language. 



THE OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 55 

signification can determine the sense of anything 
with precision. To assume that they have no 
meaning, because we cannot always satisfactorily 
explain it, is only an argumentum ad ignoran- 
tiamJ' 

Nor must it be forgotten, that in endeavouring to 
prove that in language nothing is arbitrary, we are 
under a great disadvantage, because no existing 
language has come to us in its primitive form. 
Every language, even those which are most 
ancient, and have long since ceased to be spoken, 
bears in its records the traces of a more primitive 
condition. Words, of which the composition was 
originally clear, are worn and rubbed by the use 
of ages, like the pebbles which are fretted and 
rounded into shape and smoothness by the sea 
waves on a shingly beach ; or to use the more 
appropriate image suggested by Goethe, their 
meaning is often worn away like the image and 
superscription of a coin. This process is so con- 
tinuous, that it is quite hopeless to recover the 
original form of many words, or even to make a 
probable* guess at their origin. 

Language always tends to become mechanical 

* What, for instance, is the origin of the initial a in such words 
as cfMLKphsj (r(pdx\ca, or of the initial vowels in uvop-a, odovs, 
afx€\y(a, kc. 1 — Garnett, p. 107. 



56 AN ESSAY ON 

{i,e. unmeaning of itself J by corruption ;* and to 
such an extent is this the case, that it is rather a 
matter of astonishment when, after the lapse of 
centuries, a word still retains the obvious traces 
of its original form. And yet in spite of this we 
can by induction discover from words themselves 
the Qiiain laws which influenced the formation of 
primitive speech. 

The violent dislike which we instinctively feel 
to the use of a word entirely new to us, and of 
which we do not understand the source^ is a 
matter of daily experience ; and the tendency to 
give a meaning to adopted words by so changing 
them as to remove their seemingly arhitrary 
character has exercised a permanent and appre- 
ciable influence on every language. An instance 
or two will perhaps pave the way for a more 
ready acceptance of our subsequent remarks. 

When we go into a ship or factory, and inquire the 
technical name of various parts of the machinery, 
we are either unable to use the names from not 

* When a boy answers a lady in the words ^* Yes, 'm," he is 
not aware that his *"ni" is a fragment of the five syllables 
mea domina (madonna, madame, madam, ma'am, 'm.) ** Letters, 
like soldiers, being very apt tod desert an drop off in a long 
march." — Divers, of Purley, pt. i, ch. vi. ^'Les noms des saints 
et les noms des baptemes les plus communs en sont nn exemple." — 
I)e Brosses. 



THE OEIGIX OF LANGUAGE. 57 

catching the pronunciation, or^ in attempting 
to pronounce them Tve substitute for them 
other words of similar sound and more signi- 
ficance. 

It often happens that gardeners become ac- 
quainted with new plants, or new species of old 
plants, that are brought to them under a foreign 
name; not understanding this name, they cor- 
rupt it into some word which sounds like it, and 
with which they are already familiar. To this 
source of corruption we owe such words as 
dandylion^ {dent de lion), rosemary {ros marinus), 
gilly-flower (girofle), quarter sessions rose {des 
guatre saisons), Jerusalem artichoke (giresol) 
&c. For the same reason (the dislike of terms 
with which they are unacquainted) sailors corrupt 
Bellerophon into Billy Euffian : and we have 
heard of a groom, who, having the charge of two 
horses called Othello and Desdemona, christened 
them respectively Old Fellow and Thursday 
Morning. Lamprocles, the name of a horse of 
Lord Eglintoun's, was converted by the ring into 
'■'Lamb and Pickles." The same princi]3le may 
be seen at work among servants ; we have heard 
a servant systematically use the word '' cravat" 
for '^ carafe," and astonish a gentleman by calmly 

* See Philological Transactions, v. 133 sq. 



58 AN ESSAY ON 

asking him at luncheon, '^If she should fill his 
cravat with water ? " 

The working of this tendency is all the more 
curious from the fact that very often the cor- 
rupted form of the word is wholly inapiiropriatey 
although significant. There is no doubt that, in 
most cases, we prefer a corruption, which is 
appropriate as icell as significant, and we find 
instances* of this in such words as worm- 
wood {wermutli), cx^j-fish (ecrevisse), IsLiiihoDi 
(laterna), helivj {heffroi), lokehell {racaille), beef- 
eater {buffetier)y xeTdigrease {verd de gris), spar- 
row-^mss (asparagus), &c. Where, however, this 
is unattainable, we are well content with some 
significant corruption, for which we can invent or 
imagine a meaning even if we are unaware of the 
real explanation ; as, for instance, in Charter 
House {Chartreuse), ''to a cow's thumb" = exactly 
{a la coutume), wiseacre (iveissager), saltpetre 
{saljpetra), &c. It is curious to find that in 
the desire to understand, at any rate in some 
degree, the words we use, the corrupted form 



* Phil. Trans, y. 133 sq. *'Tlie facility with Tvliicli uniisiial 

or difficult words are corrupted is being at this moment strikingly 

illustrated in the numerous Spanish words introduced into our 

language through the American conquests in Mexico ; canon, 

stancia, stampedo, &c., are already altered in form." — E.G. 



THE OEIGIX OF LANGUAGE. 59 

often gives birth to a totally false explanation- 
Tliiis Dr. Latham mentions* that the corruption of 
Chateau Vert into Shotover has led to the legend 
that Little John shot over the hill of that name 
near Oxford. Similar instances are supplied by 
the legends of Veronica, and of St. Ursula with 
her eleven thousand vii^gins. 

It may seem that we have, in the course of this 
chapter, made statements somewhat contradic- 
tory ; viz., that it is the tendency of language to be- 
come mechanical {u e.y arbitrary and conventional) 
by corruption, and yet that there is an instinc- 
tive dislike to the use of new words which convey 
no intrinsic meaning to the mind of the speaker. 
If we argued from the instances adduced in the 
last pages, we might infer that language was 

* Engl. Lang. i. p. 856, 4tli ed. St. Aldhelm's Head, in Dorset- 
shire, is always pronouiiced and generally written St. Alban s Head, 
although St. Alban had no connection with it, Penny-come-quick 
was a Tery natural, corrnption of Pen, Coombe, and Ick, the former 
name for Falmouth. These words form a curious chapter in the 
history of language. There is no doubt that the mythological 
legends of a later period are largely suggested by the corruption of 
names^ as in the case of ApJir'odite, Dionysus, &c. The fiction of 
an Oriental nation provided with a two-fold tongue (Diod. Sic. ii.) 
might easily spring from the word blyXoccrcros. See many such 
instances in Lersch. iii. 6 fg. The Greek 'Upoa-oXvfxa presents a 
double instance of this, being corrupted from !3;2',J'it, which is 
itself probably a corruption of the old Canaanite name for 
Jerusalem. Diet, of Bill. Ant. s. v. 



60 AN ESSAY ON 

originally arbitrary, and had been twisted into 
meaning by subsequent use. We must, however, 
draw attention to the fact that this latter phe- 
nomenon is only observable on the naturalisation 
of a word. A new word, however bright and 
perfect in itself, is like a strange coin upon w^hich 
we look with suspicion, because w^e are un- 
accustomed to its appearance. But when a word 
is accepted and generally understood, when, in 
fact, it has become current, we are then indifferent 
to the amount of wear on the surface or even to 
the complete obliteration of its original signifi- 
cance ; just in the same way as we do not trouble 
ourselves to observe a coin which is in common 
use, and pay no regard to the fact that its image 
is confused, and its superscription undecipher- 
able. We might, for instance, find words which 
have i)assed through both processes. Let us 
suppose* that, in course of time, the word sherbet 
had become corrupted first into syrui?, then into 
shrub ; in this case we should have an exemplifica- 
tion of a word first appropriately corrupted into 
a familiar form in the course of naturalisation, 
and then re-corrupted into a purely mechanical t 

* The instance is a pnre supposition, for sherbet, syrup, and 
shrub are from the same Arabic root, coming to us from three 
different sources. — Latham. 

f We know of very few words invented on simply arbitrary 



THE OHIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 6l 

word, by the ordinary progress of language. We 
are therefore fairly entitled to infer from the dis- 
like to the introduction of any sound as a word, 
when the sound is to the speaker an arbitrary 
one, that the same feeling must have operated 
at the dawning exercise of the faculty of speech ; 
while from the indifference which we exhibit to the 
corruption of a word when it has once been 
currently received, we may give a reason for our 
inability to explain the origin of all primitive 
roots, even while we assume with conMence that 
every root was originally significative. 

grounds. ^'Sepals" was devised by Neckar to express each 
division of the calyx (Whewell, Hist. Ind. Sc. ii. 535), and yet we 
see at once that it is only a very slight alteration of the word 
** petals," and this no doubt was the reason, not only for the 
choice of it, but also for the ready currency which it obtained. 
The term **0d force" is another instance. Cheniistry at one 
period affected to give to simple bodies only such, names as were 
destitute of all significance ; but it abandoned this practice in con- 
sequence of the absurdities and impossibilities which it involved, 
(v. Eenan, p. 148.) Thus, ^^ sulfite'^ and ^^ sulfate^'' are due to Guy ton 
de Morveau. (Charma, p. %Q.) ^' Ellagic^^ acid is the name given by 
M. Braconnot to the substance left in the process -of making pyro- 
gallic acid, and it is derived from Galle read backwards {Hist. Ind. 
Sc. ii. 547) ; but such terms are justly reprobated by men of 
science. Even proper names, which some have supposed to be 
often arbitrary, are in almost every case found capable of a real 
etymology. "lis n'ont pas, plus que les autres mots, ete imposes 
sans cause, ni fabriques au hasardy seulement pour produire une 
bruit vague." — De Brosses. This was noticed very early ; see 
Schol. ad Horn. Od. xix. 406. 



62 AN ESSAY ON 

Language may be regarded as the union of 
words and grammar, of which words are analo- 
gous to matter, and grammar to form ;* regarded 
in its form it was the expression of pure reason ; 
in its matter it was only the reflex of sensuous 
life. The absence of any definite grammar con- 
stitutes an inorganic language like the Chinese. 
Those who have derived language exclusively from 
sensation are as much mistaken as those who 
have assigned to ideas a purely material origin. 
Sensation furnished the variable and accidental 
element, which might have been quite other than 
it is, (i. e,3 the words) ; but the grammar of a 
language, (the rational form, without which words 
could not have been a language), is its pure and 
transcendental element which gives to the result 
its truly human character. Words can no more 
form a language than sensations can produce a 
man. That which originates language, like that 
which originates thought, is the logical relation 
which the soul establishes between external 
things. 

We may now state our belief that almost all 
primitive roots were obtained by Onomatopceiay 
i. e., by an imitation with the human voice of 
the sounds of inanimate nature. Onomatopoeia 

* Renan, p. 122. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 63 

sufficed to represent the vast majority of physical 
facts and external phenomena; and nearly all the 
words requisite for the expression of metaphysical 
and moral convictions were derived from these* 
onomatopoeic roots by analogy and metaphor. 

We have purposely modified our statement of 
these conclusions, because there is too great a 
tendency to general assertions, against which, as 
W. von Humboldt well remarked, science should 
be always on its guard. It is a saying of 
Schlegel's, that, so great is the variety of pro- 
cedure in different languages, that there is 
scarcely one language which might not be chosen 
to illustrate some particular hypothesis. For 
instance, the sole similarity between Chinese and 
Sanskrit rests in the fact that both aim at the 
same end, viz., the expression of thought. Thus 
onomatopoeia is far from being found in all lan- 
guages in the same degree, and it is much more 
observable in the Semitic than in the Indo- 
European family, in which, however ancient the 
word may be proved to be, it constantly bears 
witness to those poetic and philosophic instincts 
of our race which clearly prove that reason was 
not a slow and painful growth. 

" Caprice has no influence in the formation of 

* Nodier, p. 39. See, too, Garnett's Essays, p. 89. 



64 AN ESSAY ON 

language." Without believing in any universal, 
necessary, intrinsic connection betw^een word 
and tiling, we are forced to believe that there was, 
in every case, a subjective connection. The appro- 
priateness of the word resided, not in the object 
named, for in this case there would have been a 
striking similarity in all the languages of the 
human race, but in the mind of the name-giver, 
who, of necessity, stamped the word with the 
impress of his own individuality. In direct 
proportion to the delicacy of his perceptions, was 
the fitness of the words he used ; for those words 
expressed relations capable of being viewed in 
widely different aspects, so that the finer and 
more keen was the man's power of perceiving 
analogies, the greater was his capacity for the 
expression of facts. The true formula is that 
''the connection between a word and its mean- 
ing is never necessary^ and never arbitrary, but 
always results from a reasonable motive." 

But what the motives were, which in many 
cases led to the choice of particular sounds, it is 
beyond our power to conjecture or ascertain. 
The richness and delicacy of the appellative 
faculty in the savage and the infant must neces- 
sarily have existed in the primitive man, and, as 
it decayed with the decay of all necessity for its 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 65 

exercise, we are unable to point out, with any 
certainty, the tendencies by which it was actuated. 
There is no waste in the economy of nature ; a 
faculty ceases when it is no longer required, just 
as the outer leaves which ensheathe the nascent 
germ wither and drop off when the germ has 
acquired sufficient vitaUty for its own preserva- 
tion. 

'* Tecum habita '' was not the motto of the 
early inhabitants of the earth. They lived with 
the external world. The cataract '' haunted them 
like a passion," and they heard voices in the 
dawning of the sun and the murmur of the 
wind. The heavens declared the glory of God, 
and the firmament showed his handiwork ; day 
unto day uttered speech, and night showed know- 
ledge unto night. The soul of the first man, to 
use the beautiful expression of Leibnitz, was a 
concentric mirror of nature, in the midst of 
whose works he lived. Language was the echo 
of nature in his individual consciousness. The 
action of the mind produced language by a 
spontaneous repercussion of the perceptions 
received.* It is the mind which creates and forms ; 
but this power of the mind is one reacting only 
upon impressions received from the world with- 

* Bunsen, Outlines^ s. ii. 84. 78. 



66 AN ESSAY ON 

out. The imitative power of language consists 
in an artistic imitation, not of things, but of the 
rational impression which an object produces by 
its qualities. 

. The fact, therefore, that the imitation is artistic, 
and is influenced by subjective considerations, 
would prevent us from being surprised or disap- 
pointed, if we do not always see the working of 
this principle, in cases where we should have 
expected it. In such words as the Hebrew 
Khdtzatz (V^^), and Scliepliifoun (T^^ptp) ^e 
seem to hear the shearing off of the cut material, 
and the lithe rustle of the horned snake through 
the withered leaves. But words so remarkably 
suggestive are comparatively rare, and in most 
cases the imitation is more concealed. Nothing, 
however, more powerfully proves the tendency of 
language, in this respect, than the fact that words 
of a harsh meaning usually assume a rough, harsh 
form, and words that imply something sweet and 
tender seem to breathe the sensation they 
describe. The German word (entsetzen) ''terror," 
means, etymologically, a mere " displacement," 
yet who does not see that it has caught an in- 
stinctive echo from the thing which it describes, 
which, in no degree, depends on association ; — 
that, independently of imagination it betrays 



THE OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE. Q7 

something harsh by its mere form. That there is 
a consonance between external sounds and the 
processes of the mind, is decisively shown by the 
fact that whole languages have thus caught the 
impress of the associations by which they have 
been evolved. In the soft and vowelled undersong 
of modern Italian, who does not recognise the 
result of climate and natural character? The 
Doric seems to recall to us the sound of martial 
flutes, while the Hebrew, in its stern and solemn 
pomp, tells like one vast onomatopoeia, of the 
mighty mission which it was destined to ac- 
complish ; every single word of it seenis to shine 
with that mysterious light which lent strange 
lustre to the letters of it on the gems of the 
sacerdotal robe. ''When," says M. Vinet, ''you 
hear the vast word haschama'im, which names 
the heavens, unfold itself like a vast pavilion, 
your intelligence — before knowing what the word 
signifies — expects something magnificent ; no 
mean object could have been named thus; it is 
better than an onomatopoeia, although it is not 
one." * 

The exuberance and uncontrolled variety 

* Essais de Phil. Morale, p. 344. (The word C"'.>5t3 comes from 
a root signifying height .) Several of the instances in this paragraph 
are from M. Vinet. 

F 2 



68 AN ESSAY ON 

which characterises the primitive languages is a 
proof of the extraordinarily developed resources 
of the power of interpretation, or the faculty of 
converting sounds into signs, so long as the 
exercise of that faculty continued to be necessary. 
The richest idioms are always the most spon- 
taneous and unconscious. It is obviously im- 
possible for us, with our intellectual refinements 
and blunted senses, to rediscover the ancient 
harmony which existed between thought and 
sensation, between nature and man. As we are 
no longer obliged to create language, we have 
entirely lost a crowd of processes which tended 
to its elaboration. But among the early races 
there was a delicate tact, enabling them to seize 
on those attributes which were capable of supply- 
ing them with appellatives, the exquisite subtlety 
of which we are unable any longer to conceive.* 
They saw a thousand things at once, and indeed 
their language-creating faculty mainly consisted 
in a power of seizing upon relations. Our very 
civilisation has robbed us of this happy and 
audacious power. Nature spoke more to them 
than to us, or rather they found in themselves a 

* ^^ Augustus liimself, in the possession of that poorer which 
ruled the world, acknowledged that he could not make a new Latin 
word."— Locke, iii. 2. 8. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 69 

secret echo which answered to all external voices, 
and returned them in articulations — in loorcls. 
Hence those swift interchanges of meaning 
which we, with our less flashing intelligence, are 
almost unable to follow.* ' Who can seize again 
those fugitive impressions of the naifs creators of 
language in words which have undergone so 
many changes, and which are so far from their 
original acceptation ? Who can rediscover the 
capricious paths which the imagination followed, 
and the associations of ideas which guided it, in 
that spontaneous work, wherein sometimes man, 
sometimes nature, reunited the broken thread of 
analogies, and wove their reciprocal actions into 
an indissoluble unity ? ' 

Wherever the faculty of creating appellations 
is still required, we still find a capacity for its 
exercise. For instance, it has been asserted that 
*Hhe day after an army has encamped in an 
unknown country all the important or charac- 

* Renan, p. 143. ^* Tlioiigli the origin of most of our words is 
forgotten, each, word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained 
currency, because for the moment it symbolised the world to the 
speaker and the hearer. ... As the limestone of the Continent con- 
sists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is 
made up of images and tropes, which now in their secondary use 
have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin." — Emerson, 
Ess. on the Poet, 



70 AN ESSAY ON 

teristic places have their names without any con- 
vention having intervened," We find an analogous 
case in the fact that the French and English, by 
common consent, called the Turks Bono Johnny ; 
the exact reasons for such a nomenclature would 
be perhaps difficult to determine, and who shall 
say who first used or invented the term ? yet it 
became current in a day or two. It is equally 
difficult to trace the history and origin of various 
popular phrases which every now and then have a 
brief run in ordinary phraseology. 

A still more remarkable exemplification that 
the faculty of the original name-giver is not 
wholly lost to mankind may be seen in the secret, 
subtle, almost imperceptible, and sometimes 
quite unconscious analogies which give currency 
to a common nickname. At schools I have often 
known boys whose sobriquet was a vocable, in 
itself apparently meaningless and incapable of 
any circumstantial explanation, which was yet 
universally adopted, and was adopted because it 
presented some unintelligible appropriateness.* 

* Take, for instance, tlie word ** fal-lals," "borrowed from the 
bnrden of a song, and often used to describe female vanities. Does 
not tkis word afford a curious analogy to the word "falbala," the 
origin of which (to express similar articles) has occui^ied the 
attention of distinguished philosophers ? It has been explained as 
follows. It is said that a witty prince of the eighteenth centuiy 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 71 

A modern prince is called Plomb-plomb, and 
known quite commonly bv that designation : yet 
there is no such word as Plomb-plomb in the 
French language, and the very origin of the term 
is unknown to the majority of the Prince's con- 
temporaries. We may be quite sure, however, 
that the name involves either a lively onomatopoeia 
or a striking allusion.* 

once entered an elegant shop, and determined to try to tlie utmost 
the assni'ance of the (probably pretty) milliner. He therefore 
asked for a falbala, inyenting the oddest Tocable he could think 
of. "With admirable bnt imconscions insight into the principle 
of language, the undisturbed female at once brought him the- 
garniture de robe called volant, vrhich ended in light floating 
points. She instinctively caught the notion involved in flabella, 
flammula, kc. — Nodier, p. 211. The story is told differently by 
De Brosses, Form Mech, eh. xvi. § 14. The word lias excited 
much discussion. Leibnitz connects it with fald-'plat, and 
Hoffman with furbelov:. Charma, p. 306. The murderer, Pierre 
Riviere, invented the word enneijharer for the torture to which he 
used, when a boy, to subject frogs ; and the word calibene for the 
instrument which he constructed to kill birds. Charma, p. 66. 
Du Merit notices the purely musical names which children 
instinctively give to those who inspii^e them with strongly marked 
feelings of love. *' Rumpelstiltskin, " the name of the imp in the 
fairy tale, is a good instance of the reverse. 

* It is mainly among the people, rather than with philosophers, 
that the power of inventing names has lingered. Some write the 
name Plonplon, and make it a familiar abbreviation of Napoleon ; 
but accomplished Frenchmen give differing accounts of the word. 



72 AN ESSAY ON 



CHAPTER IV. 

ono:matopceia.^ 

" The sound must seem an echo to tlie sense." — Pope. 

Since the human voice is at once a sound and 
a sign, it T^^as of course natural to take the sound 
of the voice as a sign of the sounds of nature.! 
In short, to recall a sound by its echo in the voice 
is as obviously natural a proceeding as to recall 
an object to the memory by drawing the picture 
of its form. In both cases we act upon the senses 
by means of imitation ; and if the human race 
had not been endued with the organs of hearing 
doubtless a language for the eye would have been 
invented, just as Philomela, when deprived of 
her tongue, made known, by embroidery, her 

* ''Ovo^aa TTOiew. "OvouaroTroAa. est rlictio ad imitandiim sonam 
Tocis conficta, iit cum dicimus Jiinnire equos, halare oves, sfridere 
TalYas." Charis. iv. p. 245. Lerscli, i. 129—232. Tlie Latins 
call it " fictio nominis." 

i* Renan, p. 136. We have already endeavoured to guard 
against tlie misconception that language is in any sense a result of 
imitation : a mere power of imitating the sounds of nature belongs 
to animals as well as to man. — Heyse, s. 91, and supra eh. i. 



THE OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 73 

miserable tale. A word formed on the principle of 
imitation, is said to be formed by onomatopoeia, 
and although the traces of such an origin are 
rapidly lost, yet amid the almost infinite modifi- 
cations of which a few roots are capable, it is 
astonishing how vast a number of words may be 
ultimately deduced from a single onomatopoeic 
sound. 

How universal and instinctive the procedin'e 
is, may be observed among infants and savages. 

In the nursery the onomatopoean sounds moo, 
baa, bow-wow, &c», are the steps by which the 
child passes gTadually to the conception of cow, 
lamb, and dog. So in Swiss* baagen is to 
bleat, and baageli (in nursery language), a sheep. 
The very name coiu, Germ, kuh, Sansks. gao, has 
a similar origin, as (Bovs, bos, ox, Sansks. uxan, 
probably has also. There is little doubt that the 
word, cat (Germ, katze), is an imitation of the 
sound made by a cat spitting, which is one of the 
most peculiar characteristics of the feline race. 
It must, however, be admitted that there is no 
sibilant in ^' kater." 'We have all heard the story 

* Wedgwood's Etym. Diet. p. y. It is necessary to be cautious, 
of course, in deducing tlie processes of language from tiie observa- 
tion of children. See Heyse, s. 47. Tbe word moo-cow is a 
mixture of pure onomatopoeia, and onomatopceia after it has 
become conventional. 



74 AN ESSAY ON 

of the Engiisliman in China, who, wishing to 
know the contents of a dish which was lying 
before him, said inquiringly, ''Quack, quack?" 
and received in answer, the w^ord, '' bow-wow ! " 
These two imitations served all the purposes of a 
more lengthened conversation. It was probably, 
by a strictly analogous process, that an immense 
multitude of such roots was primitively formed. 

Again, it is impossible to look over any list of 
words collected from the language of a savage 
community without recognising the extensive use 
of the same method.* The repetition of syllables 
is an almost certain sign of its working. Thus, 
Ai-ai is an imitation of the cry of the sloth, and 
tuco-tuco is the name of a small rodent in Buenos 
Ayres. Mr. Longfellow has supplied u.s with 
many such words from the languages of North 
America, in his poem of '' Hiawatha," — as Kah- 
gahgee, the raven ; Minnehaha laughing-water, 
&c. " In uncivilised languages,* the conscious- 
ness of the imitative character of certain words is 
sometimes demonstrated by their composition 
with verbs,t like say or do, to signify making a 
noise like that represented by the word in ques- 
tion. Thus, in Galla, from djeda, to say, or goda, 

* See the lists of sucli vocabularies in the Transactions of the 
PhiloL Soc. t Wedgwood, p. v. 



THE OBIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 75 

to make or do, are formed cacak-djeda, to crack ; 
trrr-djeda, to chirp ; dadada-djeda, to beat ; djam- 
djam-goda, to champ." 

We do not think that the extent to which ono- 
matopoeia may be proved- to be an instrument of 
language has been sufficiently admitted. It was the 
most natural starting-point for the intelligence on 
its path towards expression. A nascent language 
enriches itself by ceaseless imitations of ele- 
mentarj^ sounds, animal cries, and the noises 
produced by mechanical contrivances, and we 
shall trace hereafter the innumerable applications 
in which such terms can be at once employed. 
Some writers even go so far as to assert that 
this is the only original principle of language, 
and that we even learned our first consonant from 
the bleating of the sheep, for which reason, 
according to Pierius Valerianus, a lamb was the 
hierogtyphical emblem of the verb ! We have 
already rejected this extension of the theory; but, 
at the same time, we can readily believe the 
assertion, that the peculiarities of articulation in 
certain countries may be not only modified, but 
even originated by the existence of remarkable 
natural sounds in the countries where these pecu- 
liarities occur. It has been said, for instance, 
*' that in some of the American languages, there 



7Q AN ESSAY ON 

are strident consonants evidently formed from 
the hiss of certain serpents unknown in our 
temperate regions, and that the click of the 
Hottentot dialects recalls a species of cry peculiar 
to the tigers which ranque,'' The latter word is 
an onomatopoeian, j)i'obably borrowed by Buffon 
from the Philomela of Albus Ovidius Juventinus, 
in which occui^s the line : — 

*'Tigrides indomte rancant* rugmntqiie leones." 

What this peculiar sound may be, we do not 
know, but can hardly reconcile this suggestion of 
Nodier with the statement, that the name,f Hott- 
en-tot is itself onomatopceian, having been given 
hj the first Dutch settlers, because this click 
would sound to a stranger like a perpetual 
repetition of the syllables hot and tot. It is a 
curious fact that Palamedes is said to have learnt, 
from the noise of cranes, the four letters which 
he added to the Greek alphabet ; and it is certainly 
a confirmation of these remarks, that although no 
language possesses in its alphabet a power of 
expressing every possible articulation, yet no 
nation's language is quite deficient in the power 

* L. 45. ''Proprium tigridis, a sono. Alii leg. raucant.''' — 
Forcellini, Lex. 

f Wedgwood, p. vi. The name is not native probably, for the 
native tribe-names mostly end in qua ; as G-riqua, Xamaqua, ^c. 



THE OEIGIX OF LANGUAGE. 77 

of expressing, by imitation, the cries of its indi- 
genous animals. 

It is wonderful that the knowledge and obser- 
vation of facts like these did not lead the philo- 
logists of antiquity to a solution of their disputes 
about the natural or conventional origin of 
languages. The age of Psammetichus evinced 
its interest in the question, and if it had been 
content to observe its own experiment, instead of 
making it the prop to a ''foregone conclusion," 
philosophers might have agreed, long ago, in 
believing, that man was assisted by nature in the 
development of his implanted powers, and that, 
like every infant of his race, he framed into living 
speech the soimds by which his senses were first 
impressed.* When the first man gave names to 
the animals, which, as we have abeady seen, he 
was enabled to do by the reasonable use of his 
own faculties, and not at the dictation of a voice 
from heaven, he could not have been guided by 
any principle so obvious, so easy, or so appro- 
priate as an artistic reproduction of the sounds 
which they uttered. 

But how, it may be asked, is the voice capable 

* Xodier, p. 79 seq. Dr. Pickering quotes an account of the 
original people of Malay, in which it is said that ''their language is 
not understood by any one : they lisp their words, the sound of 
which is liJce the noise of birds." {Races of Man. Bohn ed.p. 305.) 



78 AN ESSAY ON 

of rendering even the feeblest eclio of all the 
myriad utterances of the earth and air, the voices 
of the desert and mountain, — 

^' The echoes of illimitable forests, 
The murmur of unfathomable seas" ? 

We answer that the imitation is not, and does 
not profess to be a dull, dead, passive echo of 
the sound, but of the impression produced by it 
upon the sentient being ; it is not a mere sponta- 
neous repercussion of the perception received ; 
but a repercussion modified organically by the 
configurations of the mouth, and ideally by the 
nature of the analogy perceived between the 
sound and the object it expressed. *' The organs 
of that wonderful musical instrument, the mouth, 
are the throat, the palate^ the tongue, the teeth, 
the lips.^ This then is the subjective organon of 
language, the physiological vehicle for that proto- 
plastic art, speech, which combines architecture 
and music, the plastic and the picturesque. 
Johannes Mliller has developed this physiologi- 

* Bunsen, Outlines, ii. 82. The poet Shelley implied the same 
thought in A last or : 

" I wait breath, Great Parent, that my song 
!^^ay modulate vnxh motions of the air, 
And murmurs of the forest and the sea. 
And voice of living beings, and wovA hymns 
Of night and day, and the deep heart of man," 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 79 

cally, Sir John Herscliell acoustically." The 
mere power of imitation would not have helped 
mankind a single step towards language any more 
than it has helped the parrot or the jay,* had it 
not been for the infinitely nobler faculty which 
enabled us to perceive the meaning of the sounds 
we uttered, and to use them as the signs of our 
inward conceptions, — a faculty which has im- 
planted in language its principle of development, 
and which constitutes the distinction between the 
chatterings of a jackdaw and the eloquence of 
a man. 

This alone is a clear proof, if proof were wanted, 
that language is the result of intelligence, as well 
as of instinct ; and that the human reason was not 
a gradual acquisition of a once brutish race. 

But though the power of imitation by the voice 
of the sounds of the unintelligent creation be 
small in comparison with those other powers 
which constitute our pre-eminence, yet how per- 
fect is that gift in itself, — how wondrous the 
organism by which it is effected ! The mouth is 
admirably framed for intelligent and harmonious 
utterance ; it is at once an organ, and a flute, — a 
trumpet and a harp. Its sublime construction 
will make it the eternal despair of mechanicians, 

* Locke on the Human Understanding^ iii. i. § 1, 2. 



80 AN ESSAY ON 

and the songs which it can modulate, are superior 
to all the melodies of artificial music. The intel- 
ligence of man enables him alone to use this 
glorious instrument, as God intended it to be 
used. **I1 avait," says M. Xodier, "dans ses 
poumons un soufflet intelligent et sensible, dans 
ses levres un limbe epanoui, mobile, extensible, 
retractile, qui jette le son, qui le modifie, qui le 
renforce, qui I'assouplit, qui le contraint, qui le 
voile, qui I'eteint ; dans sa langue un marteau 
souple, flexible, onduleux, qui se repht, qui 
s'accourcit, qui s'etend ; qui se meut, et qui s'en- 
terpose entre ses valves, selon qu'il convient 
retenir ou d'epancher la voix, qui attache ses 
touches avec aprete ou qui les effleui^e avec mol- 
lesse ; dans ses dents un clavier ferme, aigu, stri- 
dent; a son palais un tympan grave et sonore : 
luxe inutile pourtant, s'il n'avaitpas eu la pensee ; 
et celui qui a fait ce qui est n'a jamais rien fait 
d'inutile. — L'homme j)arla parce qu'il pensait." 

The plain elementary sounds of which the 
human voice is capable are about twenty; and ■ 
yet it has been calculated by the mathematician 
Tacquet, that one thousand million writers, in 
one thousand million years, could not write out - 
all the combinations of the twenty-four letters of J 
the alphabet, if each of them were daily to write 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 81 

out forty pages of them, of which each page 
should contain different orders of the twenty- 
four letters. Of course, a very small number only 
of these permutations are at all required for every 
purpose of life. *' And thus it is," says the inge- 
nious author of * Hermes, " that to principles 
apparently so trivial as about twenty plain 
elementary sounds, we owe that variety of articu- 
late voices, which have been sufficient to explain 
the sentiments of so innumerable a multitude, as 
all the present and past generations of men." 

But it may be objected that if we admit such 
latitude to the use of onomatopoeia in the forma- 
tion of language, we should find among all lan- 
guages a much greater identity than actually 
exists in the terms expressive of physical facts. 
This by no means follows. We have already 
seen that words express the relations of things, 
and the relations of things are almost infinite, 
and especially must they have been so to the 
delicate senses of the youthful world. Let us 
take the instance of the thunder : the impression 
produced by it is by no means single and distinct. 
To one man it maj'' appear like a dull rumble, to 
another like a sudden crackling explosion, and to 
a third as a breaking forth of flashing light. 

* Harris's Hermes^ bk. ii. ch. 2, 3rd ed. p. 325. 

G 



82 AN ESSAY ON 

Hence come a multitude of names. Adelung 
professed to Lave collected 353 imitative appel- 
lations from the European languages alone ; and 
it is not difJicult to see that a similar* principle 
was at work in the Chinese ley (pronounced ?'ey), 
the Greenland kallak, and the Mexican tlatlatnitzel. 
Similarly, " the explosion of a gun which an Eng- 
lish boy imitates by the exclamation Bang-fire, is 
represented in French by Poiiff The neighing 
of a horse is expressed by the French hennir ; 
Italian, nitrire ; Spanish, rinchar, relinchar ; 
German, ivieliern ; Swedish, wrena, ivrenska ; 
Dutch, rimniken, ginniken, hrieschen, words in 
which it is diflficult to see a glimpse of resem- 
blance, although we can hardly doubt that they 
all take their rise in the attempt at directt repre- 

* Benan, p. 139, quoting Adelung, Mithrid, i. p. xiv. Grimm, 
Uber die Namen des Donners. (Berlin, 1855.) If the words 
**tonitru," **donner," &c., be not originally onomatopoeian, as some 
assert (wlio derive them from tan, Gfr. reiveLv), they became so 
from a feeling of the need that they should be. — Heyse, s. 93. 

f Wedgwood, p. 5. The word *'pouf" is also used of falling 
bodies, as in the Macaronic verse, **De brancha in brancham 
degringolat atque facit ^pouf,^ " It would be interesting to trace 
the causes for the divergencies in sound of obvious onomatopoeian 
words in various languages : e.g. it is clear that *' ding-dong'* 
could only be used to denote the sound of a bell in a country 
possessing large heavy bells, and therefore churches. The sound hil 
or bell (Of. tmtmnabitlum), expressive of a clear sharp tinkle, would 
naturally be used by a people, like the Gralla, only accustomed 



THE OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 83 

sentation of the same sound." In the same ^vaT, 
no one will deny that '' ding-dong," and the word 
" bilbil," to ring, in the Galla language, are 
onomatopoeians to represent the sound of a bell, 
and yet the two have hardly an element in 
common. 

It has been noticed that birds are often named 
on this principle ; as night-jar, whip-poor-will, 
cock, cuckoo, crow, crane, crake, quail, curlew, 
jay, chough, owl, turtle, &c. ; and where the bird 
has one very marked cry we find a great similarity 
in the names by which it is known. Take for 
instance the peeivit,^ Scandinavian ijee-ive'ip, tee- 
tvhoap ; French, dishidt ; Dutch, kieicit; Ger- 
man, kiehitz ; Swedish, koivijoa. But we should 
not expect this to be the case when a bird has a 
great variety of different sounds. The nightin- 
gale, according to Bechstein, has twenty distinct 
articulations, and it is therefore not surprising 
that even in the European languages it is known 
under widely different names. And besides 
names which are derived from its song {e.g, 
bulbul), it might be called from some other attri- 

to tlie small bells sold as trinkets by foreign traders. Among 
the Suaheli languages (out of five words given in Krapf's' vocabu- 
lary), no word for a bell at all resembles the sound. I am indebted 
to my friend, Mr. Garnett, for these remarks, as well as for other 
ingenious suggestions. * Wedgwood, Etymol. Did. 

G 2 



84 AN ESSAY ON 

bute entirely distinct from this, as perhaps in 
the Latin name hiscinia ; although, if this be the 
case, it is interesting to see how imitation asserts 
its prerogative in the modern names* iisig- 
nuolo (Italian), ruyseiiol (Spanish), rossignol 
(French), rousinol (Portuguese), which are pro- 
bably corruptions of the diminutive lusciniola, 
used by Plautus. 

In some cases an onomatopoeian root is so na- 
tural as to run through all families of languages ; 
e. g. the root Ih or Ik to imitate the sound and 
action of licking, as Hebrew "^D? ; Arabic, lahika ; 
Syriac, lali ; Xetx^o, lingo, ligtirio, lingua, leccare, 
lechen, lecher; it is the same with the roots grf 
to express gripping, kr to express crying, and 
many others. The practice is, however (as 

* Nodier, p. 41. Even wben the sound is no guide, different 
characteristics are chosen by different nations to furnish a name. 
The names ^'fledermaus,^' ^ ^ flittermouse,^^ are suggested like 
*^ chauve souris,^^ by the structure of the bat; vvKrepls and 
vespertilio by its habits j if the differentia of the animal be veri/ 
marked, its name will probably be derived from it in all languages, 
as noctilucdy glow-woim, lucciol'dtOj ver luisant, &c. ; yet even 
then not in all, as Johannis-wurm, Compare again (reLo-nrvylSf 
motacilla, cutretta, wagtail^ with Bachstelze, liocJie-queue^ &c. If 
the bird be rare, it is much more likely to have numerous names, 
because the observation of each casual observer as to its chief 
attribute is not liable to so much revision. Take as an instance 
the night-jar, which is also called fern-owl, churn-owl, goat-sucker, 
■\\ heel-bird, dorhawk, &c. See, too, Garnett's Essays, pp. ^%, 89. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 85 

we have already remarked), far more prominent 
in the Semitic than in the Indo-European family, 
and this is the cause of the extraordinary richness 
of synonyms in Hebrew and Arabic for the ex- 
pression of natural objects. It is. said that in 
Arabic there are 500 names for the lion, 200 for 
the serpent, more than eighty for honey, 400 for 
sorrow^ and (what is quite incredible unless 
every periphrasis be counted a name) no less 
than 1,000 for a sword. M. de Hammer, an un- 
impeachable authority, has, in a little treatise on 
the subject, counted also 5,744 words relating to 
the camel. The ancient Saxon is said to have 
had fifteen words for the sea ; and if we allowed 
merely poetical expressions like ^^the blue," we 
might say the same of modern English. 

Wide dialectic variety naturally results from a 
nomadic life ; and it is easy to see how this 
extraordinary exuberance of primitive language, 
and the uncontrolled rapidity with which it exer 
cised its powers of nomenclature, would tend 
while writing and literature were as yet un 
known, to make mutually unintelligible the Ian 
guage of different tribes.* This confusion of 

* *'The physiognomy, however, of a group of languages remains 
unaffected by the divergency of their vocabularies ; e.g. almost 
every word in the Ethiopia family of languages contains a liquid 



86 AN ESSAY ON 

speech would, of course, be the most powerful 
unpediment in the course of ambition, and 
would tend to defeat the attempts to construct 
and perpetuate a universal emphe. It may have 
been the providential agent to assert for the 
human race, '* a nobler destiny than to become 
the footstool of a few families." This is strik- 
ingly shadowed forth in the Scripture narrative 
of the builders of Babel, which many competent 
authorities have considered as applicable to only 
a single family of nations, and have regarded in 
the light rather of '*' a sublime emblem, than of a 
material verity." 

The confusion of tongues is not represented 
in Scripture *as a punishment,* but as the provi- 
dential prevention of an arrogant attempt to 
establish among mankind a spurious centre of 
unity. It seems to have frustrated the lawless 
thii'st for power which actuated the tribe of Nim- 
rod.t But even if regarded as a punishment, 

generally in connection "witli a mute as its most prominent and 
essential featui'e."— R. G. 

* It is represented as a pnnisKment in some legends, as in the 
fragment of Abvdenns, &c., quoted by Enseb. PrcBp. Ev. ix. 14. 
Joseph. Antt, i. iv. 3. Plat. Polit. p. 272. Plin. rii. 1. xi. 112. 
But see Abbt's Dissertation, ^^Confusio'ium Unguarura non fuhse 
l^cenam humano generiinflidam,'^'' Hal. 175S. 

f Kal irepiiaTa Sh kut oXiyov eis rvpauvi^a ra TrpdyuaTa. — 
Joseph. Antt, i. iv, 2. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 

God's punishments are but blessings in disgu. 
The dispersion of nations has acted as a stimu- 
lant to the powers of humanity, and has been 
the direct cause of a beneficial yariety in thought 
and action ; and in the same way the diversity of 
languages has proved to be (as we shall see here- 
after) an indisputable advantage, by adding fresh 
lustre continually to those conceptions which by 
long habit become pale and dim. Yet this dis- 
persion and diversity is but the accident of a 
fallen state, and in the renovated earth — (though 
it can never be while nations are in their present 
condition) — all men will perhaps speak the same 
perfect* universal speech. 

There are two totally distinct points from 
which an imitative root can take its origin. The 
first is from an artistic reproduction of the sounds 
of the outer world ; the second is from the ex- 
pressions of fear or anger, of disgust or joy, 
which the impression of any event or spectacle 
may call forth in the human being. The first of 
these elements is the onomatopoeic ; the second, 
the interjectional. These two sources have not 
been kept sufficiently clear and distinct, and the 
latter especially has been by many philologists 
entirely overlooked. We will proceed to make 

* 1 Cor. xiii. 8 ; Kev. tIi. 9; Zacli. viii. 23 ; ZepL. 9, &c. 



AX ESSAY ON 

some remarks on both. The instances which we 
shall select might be almost indefinitely extended, 
and even were they less numerous we might 
perhaps be allowed to use the words of President 
de Brosses, *' La preuve connue d'un grand 
nombre de mots d'une espece doit etablir une 
precepte generale sur les autres mots de meme 
espece, a I'origine desquels on ne pent plus 
remonter." 

As instances of the words which have arisen 
from the interjectional element, i. e. from the 
sounds whereby we express natural emotions, we 
may mention the large group of words that spring 
from the root '^ach," ah I oh! as utterances of 
pain, as ayjos, ax^oo, achen, ache; or from the 
sound of groaning, as vce, icehe, woe, wail ; or 
from an expression of disgust, as imtere (Fr. 
puer), foul, fulsome; or from smacking the lips 
with pleasure, as yXvKvs, dulcis, gesclwiack, &c. 
This latter class is very widely extended, even 
in the Semitic languages, as we have already 
shown in the case of the root Ik (see p. 84). 
From the expression of disgust and fear, we get 
awe, ugly, aydofj^at, dyd^o/xat and their cognates ; 
from shuddering, the roots of (ppicra-o), bristle, 
herisser, &c. ; from the first sounds of infancy, we 
get babe, bambino, babble, and many more; from 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. S9 

sounds of anger, "huff," and others; lastly, from 
" prut," a sound of arrogance, we get the word 
"jDroud," "pride," as in German, '' trotzig,'' 
haughty, from "' trotzj'^ an interjection of defiance 
and contempt. 

The other class of onomatopoeias is far more 
extensive, and embraces the widest possible range 
of inanimate sounds. They may be ranged 
under the following heads; and although the 
examples are all taken from the tEngiish lan- 
guage, they might be paralleled in almost any 
other. 

1. Animal sounds, as quack, cackle, roar, 
neigh, whinny, bellow, mew, pur, croak, caw, 
chatter, bark, yelp, &:c. 

2. Inarticulate human sounds, as laugh, cough, 
sob, sigh, moan, shriek, yawn, whoop, weep. See. 

8. Colhsion of hard bodies, represented by p, 
t, k; as clap, rap, tap, flap, slap, rat-tat, &c. 

4. Collision of softer bodies, represented by b, 
d, g; as dab, dub, bob, thud, dub-a-dub, &c. 

■* ** Trotz alle dem," is Freiligratli's rendering of Bums' **for 
a' that." I may remark here, tliat many of tliese instances are 
"borrowed from Mr. Wedgwood's Etymol. Dictionary, of wHcli the 
first part only is yet printed. This work, although not free from 
errors, has the merit of haring put forward some very clear and 
original riews on this subject. 

t Abridged from Mr. Wedgwood in the Phil. Transac. ii. IIS. 



90 AN ESSAY ON 

5. Motion through the air, represented by z, 
&c. ; as whizz, buzz, sough, &c. 

6. Resonance, represented by m, n, &c. ; as 
clang, knell, ring, twang, clang, din, &c. 

7. Motion of liquids, &c., represented by sibi- 
lants, as clash, splash, plash, dash, swash, &c. 

These are but specimens of the wide extent of 
these words in a language by no means the most 
remarkable for its adoption of onomatopoeia. 
There are even broad general laws by which the 
various degrees of intensity in sound are ex- 
pressed by the modification of vowels. Thus, 
high notes are represented by i, low broad sounds 
by a, and the change of a or o to i has the effect 
of diminution, as we see by comparing the words 
clap, clip, clank, clink, pock, peck, cat, kitten, 
foal, filly, tramp, trip, nob, nipple, &c. Another 
way of diminishing intensity is to soften a final 
letter, as in tug, tow, drag, draw, swagger, sway, 
stagger, stay, &c. Eeduplication of syllables is a 
mode of expressing continuance, as in murmur, 
&c., and this effect is also produced by the addi- 
tion of r and 1, as in grab, grapple, wrest, wrestle, 
crack, crackle, dab, dabble, &c. 

It is easy to see from the above examples that 
the onomatopoeia and the interjection are the 
points from which language has developed itself, 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 91 

and from which ^Hwo separate lines of concurrent 
and* simultaneous evolution have proceeded/' 
The manner in which the various parts of speech 
grew out of these elements, and which of them 
may be supposed to be logically or actually an- 
terior to the rest, is a wide and difficult subject 
of inquiry on which much uncertainty must 
necessarily prevail, and with which we are here 
unconcerned. 

There is no doubt that, for some reason or 
other, many of our English onomatopoeians are 
regarded as in some degree beneath the dignity 
of words, and are supposed to partake of the 
nature of vulgarity.t Yet with great inconsis- 
tency the places in which poets have been most 
successful in producing " an echo of the sound to 
the sense" are generally regarded with especial 
favour. The classic poets used this ornament 
with the most fastidious good taste. Even the 
ancients had learned to admire the rhyming 

* Latham on the Engl, Lang, iih. ed. p. xlix. Heyse, Sysfem, 
s. 73 fg. 

f Traces of tMs feeling are found in Quinctilian (Instt. Orr. i. 5). 
**Sed minime nobis concessa est oyo/jLaroTroua. , . . Jamne hinnire 
et balare fortiter diceremus, nisi judicio vetustatis niterentur ? " 
See, too, viii. 6. Other passages quoted by Lerscb {Sprachphilo- 
sopMcj i. s. 130), are Varro {L. L. v. p. 69) ; Diomed. iii. p. 453, 
&c. Plato calls it aTreiicacrfia, and the Grammarians aTrb ijxovs. 



92 AX ESSAY ON 

termination by vrhicli Homer faintly recalls the 
humming of the summer swarms, in the lines — 

'Hure eOpea ttoWo. fxeXLaadoou adii^docu 
Trerp-qs itc yXacpuprjS ael veoy ipxcfi^ydocy : 

and yet they do not surpass the exquisite verses 
of a living poet : — 

Myriads of rivulets hurrying tlirougli the la^m ; 
The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 
And murmur of innumerable bees. 

•Again, what can be more vivid than the marvel- 
lous waj^ in which Homer recalls the snapping of 
a shattered sword, in — 

TpLxOt re Kol rerpaxOl ^iarpv(t>eu : 

which is incomparably superior to the much- 
admired hemistich of Eacine, "L'essieu crie et 
se rompt." Both Homer and Yirgil have imi- 
tated the rapid clatter of horses' hoofs with equal 
felicity : — 

IloAAd S' avavra, Karavra, Trdpaprd re doxp-id r ^\9ov : 

Q.uadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum : 

and the verse ^ in which Dubartas endeavours to 

* ** La gentile alonette avec son tire lire, 
Tire I'ire anx fachez, et tire-lirant tire 
Vers la route du ciel : puis son vol vers ce lieu 
Vii'e, et desire dire a dieu Dieu, a dien Dieu." 
The verse seems to me too laboured and unnatural. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 93 

recal the manner in which the lark '' shoots up 
and slmlls in flickering gyres," has met with 
numberless admirers/ 

The greatest of our modern poets, Mr. Tenny- 
son, has perhaps been more unsparing and more 
successful in his use of this figure than any of 
his predecessors, and a few passages will show 
that onomatopoeia judiciously used is capable of 
the noblest a]3phcation. Take^ for instance, the 
leap of a cataract, in — 

Where the river sloped 
To plunge in cataract, shattering on black blocks 
Its breadth of thunder ; 

or the shock of a melee, in — 

The storm 
Of galloping hoofs bare on the ridge of spears 
And riders front to front, until they closed 
In conflict with the crash of shiyering poiats 
And thunder. . . . 

And all the plaia — brand, mace, and shaft, and shield 
Shock' d, like an iron-clanging anvil banged 
With hammers ; 

or the booming of the sea, in — 

Roar rock-thwarted under bellowing cares ; 

or, finally, what can be more perfect than the 
graphic power in which the picture of a fleet of 
glass wrecked on a reef of gold is called before 



94 AN ESSAY ON 

US by the perfect adaptation of sound to sense, 
in the lines — 

For tlie ifleet drew near, 
Touchedf clinked^ and clashed, and vanished. 

Yet in all these cases we believe that it is to the 
language and not to the poet that the main credit 
is due. The language is the perfect instrument, 
and in the poet's hands it is used with perfect 
power ; but were it not for the original perfection 
of his instrument he would be unable to produce 
such rich and varied results ; he would be unable 
to place the picture before the eye by bringing 
into play that swift and subtle law of association 
whereby a reproduction of the sounds at once 
recalls to the inner eye the images or circum- 
stances with which they are connected. In every 
case the consummate art and skill of the writer 
consists simply in choosing the proper words for 
the thought which he wishes to express, which 
words are always the simplest. Appropriate* 
language is and always must be the most effec- 
tive, and when a writer clearly goes out of his 

* *^ Many at least of tlie celebrated passages that are cited as 
imitative in sound, were, on the one hand, not the result of 
accident, nor yet on the other hand of study ; but the idea (?) in 
the author's mind spontaneously suggested appropriate sounds." — 
Archbp. Whately's Rhetoric, iii. s. 2. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 95 

icay to produce an effect he generally loses his 
effectiveness by abandoning simplicity. How 
much onomatopoeia degenerates in a less skilful 
and artistic hand we might see in many instances, 
were not the selection of them an invidious task. 
In short, an exquisite and instinctive taste can 
only decide on the extent to which this figure 
may be consciously used. We feel that Virgil 
was right in rejecting Ennius's 

At tuba terribili sonitu taratantara dicit, 

as the imitation of a trumpet-blast ; and none but 
a comic poet (like Swift) would use rub-a-dub, 
dub-a-dub in English to express the beating of a 
drum: and yet who was ever otherwise than 
delighted with the word rrjveWa, in which Archi- 
lochus imitated the twang of a harp-string, and 
which the Greeks used ever afterwards as an 
expression of joyous triumph ? Again, none but 
a comedian could have ventured on so direct an 
imitation of sounds as /Spe/ce/cefcef kocl^ Kod^, and yet 
no one could object to the pretty line in which 
Ovid tries to produce the same impression : — 

Quamquam sunt suh aqua, suh aqua maledicere tentant. 

The misuse of language fails to produce the 
echo which its simple and natural use would not 



96 AN ESSAY ON 

have failed to awake. In short, it is in many 
cases impossible to use language which shall be 
at once specific and appropriate without being 
forced to adopt imitative words. There is no 
style required in order to speak of the booming 
of the cannon, the twang of the bowstring, the 
hurtling of the arrow, the tolling or pealing of 
the bell, the rolling or throbbing of the drum, , 
the sough or whisper of the breeze, because in 
each case the proper word is ready for us at 
once in the language which we speak, and if 
we are to speak naturally we can use no other. 
The harmonies of language arise mainly from 
this power of imitation, and a sensuous language 
is always energetic, poetic, passionate. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 97 



CHAPTEE V. 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ROOTS. 

Language is like the minim immortal among tlie infusoria, 
which keeps splitting itself into halves. — Colekidge, 

The most brilliant of modern philosophers, M. 
'Victor Cousin, in endeavouring to refute the 
conclusion of Locke that all words draw their 
first origin from sensible ideas, adduces the pro- 
noun '* I " and the verb '' to be " as words which 
are primitive, indeeomposible, and irreducible in 
levery language with which he is acquainted — as 
fwords which are pure signs, representing nothing 
ihvhatever except the meaning conventionally at- 
tached to them, and having no connection with 
sensible ideas. 

Whatever may become of M. Cousin's general 
proposition, the instances which he has chosen 
to support it are very unfortunate, for it may be 
learly proved that these words, abstract as they 
paay appear, are yet derived from sensible images. 
4.n examination of them will therefore help us to 
gain a little insight into the origin of language, 



98 AN ESSAY ON 

and perhaps strengthen our suspicion that even 
the most subjective words, which merely intimate 
intellectual relations, even the words which ex- 
press the essential categories, may be ultimately 
proved to have a metaphorical and not a psycho- 
logical origin. Such a conviction will by no 
means impair the dignity of language, or cast a 
slur on the majesty of thought; for if the entire 
lexicon of every language be capable of being 
reduced to a number of sensational roots, the no 
less important element of Grammar always re- 
mains as the indisputable result of the pure 
reason. And not only so, but even the possi- 
bility of accepting imitative roots as signs of the 
thing imitated, supposes (as ]M. Maine * de Biran 
acutely observes) the pre-existence of an activity 
superior to sensation, whereby the thinking 
being places himself outside the circle of im- 
pressions and images in order to signify and note 
them. 

It might be supposed that the word by which 
a man characterises himself in relation to his 
own consciousness would be of a very mysterious v 

* Essai sur le.s fondemenfs de imjcJiologie. Tlie same psycho- 
logist in liis Essay on the Origin of Language says of those Trho 
maintain a revealed language, that they give us ''comme article 
de foi une hypothese arhitraire et amphibologique," — CEuvres 
Ined.de Maine de Biran^ iii. pp. 229—278. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 99 

and abstract character, because it must express 
the notion of individuality, which might be re- 
garded as a very primary intuition. This, how- 
ever, is far from being the case. Man regarded 
himself as an object before he learnt to regard 
himself as a subject, and hence '^ the objective 
cases of the personal as well as of the other pro- 
nouns are always older than the subjective," and 
the Sanskrit mam, ma (Greek /xe, Latin 7ne) is 
earlier than ahamv (eycoz/, and ego). We might 
have conjectured this from the fact already 
noticed, that children learn to speak of them- 
selves in the third person, i. e. regard themselves 
as objects long before they acquire the power of 
representing their material selves as the instru- 
ment of an abstract entity. A child * does not 
attain to the free use of the pronoun '^ I " until 

\y the acquisition of formal grammar outstrips the 

»' psychological growth. And the same takes place 
with other personal pronouns. Man's primary 

^consciousness of his own existence is nearly 
F4multaneous with the belief that he is some- 

(thing separate from the not-me, the external 
world. But at first he would only regard this 
external world as an immense inseparable phe- 



* See some admirable remarks to this effect in Mr. F. TMialley 
Harper's excellent book on the Power of Greek Tenses. 

H 2 



i 



100 AN ESSAY ON 

nomenon, and it Tvoiilcl be some time before lie 
could *' invest the * not-me with the powers of 
agency and will which we experience in our- 
selves." 

But whether the conception of individuality be 
regarded as coming early or late, so far is the 
pronoun " I " from involving any sublime intrinsic 
meaning, that it was originally a demonstrative 
monosyllable, indicative of a particular position. 
''In fact," says Dr. Donaldson, ''the primitive 
pronouns must have been very simple words, for 
the first and easiest articulations would naturally 
be adopted to express the primary intuition of 
space. These little vocables denote only the 
immediate relations of locality. It is reasonable 
to suppose that the primitive pronouns would be 
designations of lure and there, of the subject and 
object as contrasted and opposed to one another. 
As soon as language becomes a medium of com- 
munication between two speaking persons, a 
threefold distinction at once arises between the 
here or subject, the there or object, and the per- 
son spoken to or considered as a subject in him- 
self, though an object in regard to the speaker." 
In other words, there are " three f primitive rela- 

* Donaldson's New Crafyhis, p. 220, 4tli ed. 
f Donaldson's Greelc Grammar^ s. 67 — 79. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 101 

tions of position : here, near to here, and there, 
or juxtaposition, proximity, and distance. The 
three primitive articulations which are used (in 
Greek) to express these three relations of posi- 
tion, are the three primitive teiiues, FT, Q, T, 
pronounced pa, qua, ta, which we shall call the 
first, second, and third pronominal elements. 
The first pronominal element denoting juxta- 
position, or here, is used to express (a) the first 
personal pronoun ; (b) the first numeral ; (c) the 
point of departure in motion. The second pro- 
nominal element denoting proximity, or near to 
the here, is used to express (a) the second per- 
sonal pronoun ; (b) the relative pronoun ; (c) the 
reflexive pronoun. The third pronominal ele- 
ment, denoting distance, is used to express (a) the 
third personal pronoun; (b) negation ; (c) separa- 
tion." * Thus, then, we find that even so meta- 
physical a conception as that of individuality is 
only expressed by an elementary word implying 
locality. 

AVe see, therefore, that aI. Cousin is mistaken 
in supposing that the pronouns at any rate 
were non-sensational in their origin, arising as 
thej^ do from the very earliest and simplest of all 

* For the deTelopment and more clear enunciation of these 
views, we must refer to the works quoted. 



102 AN ESSAY ON 

sensations. And it is, perhaps, still more surpris- 
ing tofincltliat a similar origin can be traced even 
in the numerals, which involved the very triumph 
of abstraction ; for, in using a numeral, ''we strip 
things of all their sensible properties,* and con- 
sider them as merely relations of number, as 
members of a series, as perfectly general rela- 
tions of place." And yet abstract as they are, 
and, absolutely as we might suppose them to be 
removed from concrete objects of sense, it is a 
matter of certainty that their genesis can be traced. 
About the general result few philologists have 
any doubt, however much they may differ in their 
details. ''I dot not think," says M. Bopp, 
^^ that any language whatever has produced special 
original words for the particular designation of 
such compacted and peculiar ideas as three, four, 
five, &c." Accordingly it has been proved that 
the three first numerals in Sanskrit and Greek 
are connected with the three personal pronouns, 
and originally implied here,lnear to the here, and 

* Donaldson's New Crat. cli. ii. Plato {Crat, p. 435) tliouglit 
the numerals offered a proof that at least some part of language 
must be the result of convention and custom {crvvQ-iiKT] koX %6os). 

f Bopp's Comparative Grammar^ § 311. 

:|: Dr. Donaldson aptly compares (Neiv Crat. § 154) the vulgarism 
"number one" as a synonym for the first person, and " proximus 
sum egomet mihi." 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 103 

there; that the fourth* implies 1 + 3; that the 
fifth, as might have been expected, is connected 
with the same root as the word ''hand;" that 
the tenth numeral means two hands, and so 
forth. 

Still it might be supposed that the verb 
"to be," predicating as it does the quality of 
existence, a conception so abstract that the pro- 
foundest metaphysicians and physiologists have 
been as yet wholly unable to find for it any 
tolerable definition, would resist all attempts at 
a reduction to any sensational root. If we are to 
look to a definition of ''life" as being either un- 
discoverable, or else a discovery which can only be 
expected from the ultimate triumphs of science, 
surely w^e might suppose that here at least it is 
impossible to find a sensible idea as the root of 
the sublime verbs which are the means of repre- 



* Bopp's Comparative Gramma?', §§ 309, 823. Donaldson's 
New Crat. cli. ii. ; Greek Gram. § 246. For tlie Hebrew numerals 
see MasJcil-le SopJiir, pp. 41 sq., by the same author. Other 
works are Pott, Die quindre und vigesimale Zahlmethode. 
Halle, 1847. Mommsen, in Hofer's Zeitschr. filr die Wiss. der 
Spr. Heft. 2, 1846. In Greenland the word for 20 is "a man," 
(i.e. fingers + toes = 20) ; and for 100 the word is Jive men, &c. ! 
It might have been thought that particles were eminently (what 
Aristotle calls them) (pojual 'olo-tj/jlolj and yet even their pedigree 
may be traced ; and in fact no clear line of distinction can be 
drawn between them and the (pwj/al ari^xavrLKai. — Heyse, s. 108 ff. 



104 AN ESSAY ON 



i4 



senting life as an attribute. But we are all liable 
to the error of forming far too* high an estimate 
of the intrinsic vitality (the supposed occulta vis)] 
of verbs in general. They contain no inherent ^ 
powers which separate them from nouns, and 
their supposed distinctive character arises en- 
tirely out of their combination with a subject. 
The fancy (for instance) that ^'the root can ^sing' 
differs from can ' song' in the same degree that 
a magnetised steel bar differs from an ordinary *. 
one, or a charged Leyden jar from a discharged ' 
one," is proved by minute analysis to be totally 
groundless. And the importance of the verb 
" to be " in particular has been greatly exagge- 
rated, as though it were a necessary ingi'edient 
of every logical proposition. For in many lan- 
guages the verb is wanting altogether, and its 
mere implication is quite sufficient for all logical 
purposes. '* The verb -substantive," observes 
Mr. Garnett (from whose most valuable Essay on 
the nature and analysis of the verb we have 

* For instance, -we find M. A. Yinet {Essais de Pkilos. Morale^ 
p. 323) speaking of the verb as tlie word whicli foundsj or, so 
to speak, creates an ideal world side by side with the real world, 
and of wMch the real world is either the expression or the type. 
The word ''verb'' has often been dwelt on as showing the im- 
portance attached to this part of speech; the Grerman ^^zeitwon" 
is more to the purpose. The Chinese call it ho-tseUj or the living 
word (Silvestre de Sacy, Pnncqjes de Gram, Gen, i. ch. 1.) 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 105 

borrowed these suggestions), " if considered as 
necessary to vivify all connected speech and bind 
together the terms of every logical proposition, 
is much upon a footing with the phlogiston of 
the chemists of the last generation, regarded as a 
necessary pabulum of combustion — that is to say, 
Vox et prceterea nihil'' 

Whatever our a priori estimate of the power 
of the verb-substantive may be, its origin is 
traced by philology to very humble and material 
sources. The Hebrew verbs ^^'Q (houa), or 
^t'? (haia), may very probably be derived from 
an onomatopoeia of respiration. The verb kama^ 
which has the same sense, means primitively *' to 
stand out," and the verb koum,^ to stand, passes 
into the sense of '' being." In Sanskrit, as-mi 
(from which all the verbs-substantive in the Indo- 
European languages are derived, as ei/xt, simi, 
am ; Zend, ahmi ; Lithuanic, esmi ; Icelandic, 
em, &c.), is, properly speaking, no verbal root, 
but '' a formation on the demonstrative pronoun 
sa, the idea meant to be conveyed being simply 
that of local presence." And of the two other 

* Compare tlie Italian stare, Spanish estar. Prof. Key (Trans, 
of Phil. Soc. vol. iv.) quotes an anecdote of a lady who had to 
tell her African servant, *' Go and fetch big teacup, he live in 
pantry." We cannot,- however, accept his derivations of *^esse" 
from *'edo," and "vivo" from "bibo." 



106 AN ESSAY ON 

roots used for the same purpose, viz. hhu {(})V(j), 
fui, &c.), and sthd {stare, &c.),* the first is pro- 
bably an imitation of breathing, and the second 
notoriously a physical verb, meaning 'Ho stand 
up." May we not, then, ask with Bunsen, " What 
is 'to be' in all languages but the spiritualisation 
of walking or standing or eating ? " 

Perhaps if we were to try to think of any 
positive word which it would be impossible to 
derive from a root imitative of sound, it would be 
the word silence. And yet we believe that the 
root of even this word is a simple onomatopoeia, t 
and that it is connected with the sibilants (hush ! 
whish ! &c.), by which we endeavour to call 
attention to the fact that 'we desire to listen 
intently. It may help us to accept this etymology 

* See Renan, p. 129. Becker, Organism der SpracTie, p. 58. 
In point of fact, the conception of existence in untauglit minds is 
generally concrete, and often grossly material. Vico mentions tlie 
fact, that peasants often say of a sick person "he still eats," for 
*'he still lives." *'In the Lingua Franca the more abstract verbs 
have disappeared altogether; 'to be' is always expressed by Ho 
stand,' and 'to have' by 'to hold.' 

' Non tenev honta 
Questo star la ultima affronta.' 
This shows the tendency of language to degradation when not 
upheld by literary culture and elevated thought. Barbarism 
proved as efficacious in materialising the conception of the Latin 
races, as in sweeping away the niceties of their grammar. To this 
day the Spaniards say, tengo hamhre^ for esurio.^^ — R. Gf. 



THE OEIGIX OF LANGUAGE. 107 

if we observe that the colloquialism ''to be 
7?22n?i" undoubtedly arises* from an imitation of 
the sound by vrhich we express the closing of the 
lips. 

If we fully allow that a considerable number of 
roots have (and must have) sprung from the in- 
stinctive principle which we have been endea- 
vouring to illustrate, we have gone very far to 
show what was the origin of language. For the 
permutations and combinations of which a very 
few roots! are capable, and the rich variety of 
applications of which each separate root admits, 
are almost inconceivable to any who have not, 
by a study of the subject, rendered themselves 
familiar with the processes of the human mind. 
Indeed, a superfluity of roots argues a feebleness 
of conception, and a superabundant vocabulary is 
an impediment to thought. In the Society Isles 
they have one word for the tail of a dog, another 
for the tail of a bird, and a third for the tail of a 
sheep, and yet for ^^tail'' itself," — ''tail" in the 

* See "Wedgwood, p. xvii. 

f Who would h aye tliouglit a priori tLat the Trord "stranger' 
has its root in the single vowel e, the Latin preposition for 
*'from" ? Yet we see it to be so, "the moment that the inter- 
mediate links of the chain are snbmitied to our examination, — 
e, ex, extra, extraneus, etranger, stranger.*' — Dugald Stewart, 
PMlos, Es. p. 217, 4th ed. 

% Adelung, Jlithridates, iii. 6, p. 325. 



lOa AN ESSAY ON 

abstract, they have no word whatever. Again, 
the Mohicans have words for wood-cutting, cut- 
ting the head, the arm, &c., and yet no verb 
meaning simply to cut. But all the specific words 
are comparatively of very little use ; in point of ■ 
fact they are encumbrances, rather than treasures. 
It is the sign of an advancing language to modify 
or throw away these superfluities of special 
terms. Thus the number of roots decreases con- 
tinually ; in Sanskrit, there are* 2,000 ; in Gothic, 
not more than 600 ; while 250 are said to be 
sufl&cient to supply the modern German with its 
80,000 words. 

The processes by which this retrenchment is 
carried on are the derivation, and composition of 
necessary and existing uses to supersede the con- 
tinual invention of new ones. The laws by which 
/these processes are efl"ected are for the most part 
'regular and universal, and the discovery of them 
constitutes the great reward of modern philology. 
But as our present inquiries are only of the most 
general and preliminary nature, we must confine 
ourselves here to giving one or two short and com- 
paratively easy specimens of what we may term 
the elasticity or diffusiveness of roots. 

"We have already alluded to the root *' ach," as 

* Beuloew, De la Science Comp. des Langites, p. 22. 



THE OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 109 

having been in all probability an onomatopoeian 
which gives rise to a large number of cognate 
words in the Indo-European languages. It is at 
any rate interesting to observe how this root, 
however originated, suffices to express alike ma- 
terial sharpness, bodily sensations, and mental 
emotions. M. Garnett* gives the following brief 
list of examples : — "'^Ako), aKavOa, axis, at'xM^, aciio, 
acus, acies ; Teutonic, ekke (edge), ackes (axe); 
Icelandic, eggia, to sharpen, to exhort, to egg on; 
German, ecke, a corner; Bavarian, igeln, iDViirire 
{Gevmsiii, jitcken ; Scotch, yeuk ; English, itch) 
— acken (to ache), a^os (grief); Anglo-Saxon, 
ege^ fear — egeslich, horrible ; Icelandic, ecki, sor- 
row ; German, ekel, disgust ; with very many 
more. It is possible that Anglo-Saxon ege, an 
eye, may be of the same family. Compare the 
Latin phrase, acies oculorum,'' 

Or, again, let us take the Sanskrit root dim, to 
move about, to agitate. A Hst of the derivatives 
from this root in various Indo-European lan- 
guages would fill several pages, but we will only 
supply one or two. First, then, we get the verbs 
6vco and 6vv(x>, to rush, or move violently, with 
their derivatives, as dveXXa, a storm; dvvvos, a 
thunny-fish (from its rapid, darting motion); 

* £ssay on English Dialect Sj p. 6i. 



110 AN ESSAY ON 



6vcravo9, a waving, fluttering tassel ; OvtaSf a bac- 
chanal ; 6vp(Tos, the shaken thyrsus, or ivy- 
wreathed w^and, the symbol of Bacchic frenzy ; 
Oopelv, to leap ; Oovpos, impetuous ; a6vpco, to play ; 
and among many others, dvpios, the mind, from 
the same property which struck the poet, in 



How swift is the glance of the mind ! 

Compared with the speed of its flight 
E'en the tempest itself lags behind, 

And the swift- speeding arrows of light ! 

From the same root we get 6vco, to sacrifice, 
from the striking aspect of the rising and curling 
fumes, Avhen the victim lay burning on the altar ; 
BvpLos, thyme, from the use made of that herb in 
fumigations; fmnus, smoke ; Ovixikr], the altar in the 
centre of the orchestra; and many mere. Lastly, 
we may mention the curious word OodCeLV, which 
is used in the apparently contradictory senses of 
''to move hastil3%" and '' to sit." 

The curious phenomenon presented bj" the 
latter word, of the same root serving for two di- 
rectly opposite meanings, is one worthy of the 
greatest attention ; and we believe that it has 

* Still more strange are the variations presented by the root aco. 
See Leibnitz, Nouv. Ess. sur VEiitendement ffumain, in. 2. 2 ; 
and Donaldson's New Crat. p. 476. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 11 J 

first been definitely noticed bv modern philologists. 
'^ Contrast," says Archdeacon Hare, '' is a kind 
of relation;" and the suggestion of contrarieties 
may even be regarded as a primary law of the 
association of ideas. It is this principle which 
accounts for the apparently strange fact that 
opposite conditions are expressed by the same 
root shghtly modified. Thus, to select some of 
the instances collected by Dr, Donaldson,* our 
own word '' dear" has the two meanings of 
" prized," because you have it, and "expensive," 
because you want it ; and " fast" has the opposite 
senses of '' fixed " and " rapid." Similarly, XP^^^ 
in Greek means both '' use" and '' need" ; 
and )^do) means both "to wish" and " to take ;''^ 
while aio, avhdco, and KoXio), " I speak," or 
" call," are singularly like dtoo, audio, and kXvoo, 
"Ihear."t 

* Nevj Crat. p. 80. 

f The *' Incus a non lucendo" principle, whioh explained rarious 
positive words as thongli they were derived from tlie absence of the 
quality they attribiited, has long been given np by all sonnd 
scholars. Of course such names as Euxinus, Beneventum, 
Eu,u6j/t56s, ''good folk," "cretin," "natural," &c., arise in a 
totally different manner, as well as the name Parc^e, absurdly 
derived "a non parceado." The supposed instances of " Anti- 
phrasis," as the grammarians cpJled it, are eminently absurd, e.g. 
Yarro, L. L. iv. 8: "Coelum, contrario nomine celatum, quod 
apertum est." Donat. de Trop. p. 1778 : "Bellum, hoc est minime 



H2 AN ESSAY ON 

Another instance of the same peculiarity arises 
from the diiferent objective or subjective rela- 
tions which any phenomenon may present, some 
of which relations may be strongly contrasted ; 
e. g,, a '' key " might derive its name either from 
opening or shutting. Thus, to adopt some of 
the cases mentioned by Mr. Garnett,* the numeral 
one gives rise to compounds of apparently oppo- 
site signification. From the Irish aon, " one," 
we have aonach, '* a waste," and also *' an assem- 
bly;" aontugadh, celibacy, and aoiitiimadh, mar- 
riage. The Latin unicus implies singularity, 
but unitas implies association. ^' The concord 
of this discord is easily found, if we consider that 
the term one may either refer to one as an indi- 
vidual, or in the sense of an aggregate,'' Simi- 
larly, it is not difficult to explain the apparent 
anomaly that crxokr] means both '•' school '^ and 
*' leisure," and that '^ lee " has very different 
acceptations in lee-side and lee-shore. Other 
examples might easily be found, all tending to 
prove that '^ as rays of light may be reflected 
and refracted in all possible ways from their 
primary direction, so the meaning of a word may 

bellum." Tliey confused it witli ii'ony and eupliemisni. See 
Lersch, i. s. 132, 133. 

* Essays, p. 284 sq. 



THE ORIGIN OF LAXGUAGE.. 113 

be deflected from its original bearing in a variety 
of manners; and consequentlj^ we cannot well 
reach the primitive force of the term unless we 
know the precise gradations through which it 
has gone." 

It has been proved, then, in this chapter, that 
a few onomatopoeic roots would give a sufficient 
basis on which to rear the largest superstructure 
of language, and we have shown how in some 
cases an imitative origin may be discovered even 
in words which might have been expected to 
defy analysis. Into the methods adopted in this 
rich variety of applications we must inquire more 
closely in the following chapter, but we must 
here remark that, as it was by the association of 
ideas that even the most heterogeneous and con- 
trary relations were expressed by the same root, 

I so the words themselves tend powerfully to esta- 
blish new points of association, and to facilitate 

i the astonishing rapidity of thought. By the aid 
of verbal signs we exercise an enormous power 
over all our faculties, for in repeating the sign 
we are enabled by the personal activity of our 
will to recall the image which it represents, and 
submit that image to our control.^ Our sensa- 

* Did. des Sciences Philosopli. p. Qi^. Locke on tlie Under. 
III. ii. 6. 



114 AX ESSAY ON 

tions, transformed into thoiiglit, come and go at 
our bidding, and we extend and multiply them 
without limit. 

Awake "but one;, and lo, what myriads rise ! 

By virtue of an active imagination the fathers 
of the human race produced the mighty heritage 
of speech, and made the utterance of their lips 
a means of recalling their sensations and ex- 
pressing their thoughts ; in consequence of the 
activity of the imagination, our words become 
the tyrants of our convictions, and our phrases 
'^ often repeated, ossify the verj^ organs of intel- 
li^'ence." 

Hence the blood of nations has often ere now 
been shed from an inability to see the synthesis 
of various truths in some single threadbare 
shibboleth of party ; and a mistaken theory 
embalmed in a* widely-received word has re- 

■^ Tlins tlie long opposition to the Newtonian theory in France 
rose mainly from the influence of the word *' attraction." See 
Coulte's Pos. Philos. (Martineau s ed.) i. p. 182. For the 
tremendous consequences of the introduction of the term ^^ landed 
jpro'prietor'^ into Bengal, see LlilF s Zo^/zc, ii. 232. It caused "a 
disorganisation of society which had not been introduced into 
that couDtry by the most nithless of its barbarian invaders." 
''Fetish," as adopted by the negroes fi*om the Portuguese, 
''feiticao" (sorcery), is an instance of a word changing meaning 
with the feeling of the speakers. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 115 

tarded for centuries the progress of knowledge. 
For, as Bacon wisely says, *' Men believe that 
their reason is lord over their words, but it 
happens, too, that words exercise a reciprocal 
and reactionary power over the intellect," and 
that *' words, as a Tartar's bow^ do shoot back 
wpon the understanding of the wisest, and 
mightily entangle and pervert the judgment." 

There is one moral a]3plication of the truths 
we have been considering, which we should do 
well not to omit ; it is the far-reaching danger 
of idle * or careless words ; it is the solemn 
admonition — 

Guard well thy thougldSy for thoughts are hea7'd in Heaven ! 



* 77^01;^ %apaft:Ti7p l(TTi r av6p:airov Koyos. — Stob. The language 
of a people expresses its genius and its character. — Bacon, De 
Augm. Scient. vi. i. Cf. Diog. Laert. p. o^. Quinct. xi. p. 67o. 
Cic. Tusc. Disp. V. 16. 



I 2 



116 AN ESSAY ON 



CHAPTEK VI. 

METAPHOE. 

*^ Die Sinnliclikeit erzeugt, auf der ersten stufe der Wortschop- 
fung, emAhhild; die Einbildungskraft, auf der zweiten, ein Symhol; 
der Verstand, endlicli, auf der dritten, ein Zeichen f iir das object." 
— Heyse, System der Sprachivissenschaft, s. 95. 

" Every language is a dictionary of faded metaphors." — Richter. 

If it be impossible for us to knoiv any single 
particle of matter in itself; if we are unable to 
do more than express the relations of any single 
external phenomenon ; how can we hope to give 
an accurate nomenclature to the noumeiia, the 
inward emotions, the immaterial conceptions, the 
abstract entities which we cannot touch or handle, 
and which have an existence only for the intel- 
lect and the heart ? How can we make the 
modulations of the voice the symbols * for the 
passions of the soul ? 

In mathematics there is a line, known as the 
asymptote, which continually approaches to a 
curve, but, being produced for ever, does not cut 

* ^'EdTL fiev ovv ra iu ry (pcavfj rocv iu rfj ^uxy 7rad'/}/LLdrcoi^ 
crv/jipoXa. — Arist. De Interp. i. i. 



THE OKIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 117 

it, though the distance between the asymptote 
and the curve becomes, in the course of this 
approach, less than any assignable quantity. 
Language, in relation to thought, must ever be 
regarded as an asymptote. They can no more 
perfectly coincide than any two particles of matter 
can be made absolutely to touch each other. 
No power of language enables man to reveal the 
features of the mystic Isis, on whose statue was 
inscribed : '' I am all which hath been, which is, 
and shall be, and no mortal hath ever lifted my 
veil." Now, as ever, a curtain of shadow must 
hang between — 

That hidden life, and what we see and hear. 

No single virtue, no single faculty, no single 
spiritual truth, no single metaphysical concep- 
tion, can be expressed without the aid of analogy 
or metaphor. Metaphor — the transference of a 
word from its usual meaning to an analogous 
one — is the intellectual agent of language, just 
as onomatopoeia is the mechanical agent. Me- 
taphor and catachresis (i. e,, the use of the same 
word to express two different things which are 
supposed to present some analogy to each other, 
as when "sweet" is applied to sounds) have 
been called the two channels of expression 



118 AN ESSAY ON 

which irrigate the wide field of human intelli- 
gence. By their means language, though poor 
in vocables, was rich in thought, and resembled 
in its power the one coin* of the Wandering 
Jew, which alwaj's sufficed for all his needs, 
and always took the impress of the sovereign 
regnant in the countries through which he 
passed. 

We might have easily conjectured that such 
would be the case. '' Man, by the action of all his 
faculties, is carried out of himself and towards 
the exterior world ; the phenomena of the ex- 
terior world are those which strike him first, and 
those, therefore, are the ones which receive the 
first names, which names are, so to speak, tinted 
with the colours of the objects they express. But, 
afterwards, when man turns his attention inwards, 
he sees distinctly those intellectual phenomena, 
of which he had previously had onlj^ a confused 
perception, and when he wishes to express those 
new phenomena of the soul and of thought, 
analogy leads him to apply the signs which he is 
looking for to the signs which he already pos- 
sesses ; for analogy is the law of every nascent 
or developed language ; hence come the me- 
taphors into which analysis resolves the ma- 

* Nodier, p. 65. 



THE OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 119 

jority of the signs for the most abstract moral 
ideas."* 

To call things which we have never seen be- 
fore by the name of that which appears to us 
most nearly to resemble them, is a practice of 
!i every-clay life. That children at first call all 
men ^'father/' and all women ''mother," is an 
observation as old as Aristotle. t The Eomans 
gave the name of Lucanian occ to the elephant, 
and camelopardus to the giraffe, just as the New 
Zealanders are stated to have called '^ horses " 
large dogs. The astonished Caffirs gave the 
name of cloud to the first parasol which they had 
ll seen ; and similar instances might be adduced 
r almost indefinitely. They prove that it is an 
I instinct, if it be not a necessity to borrow for the 
I unknown the names already used for things 
I known. 

But although we can absolutely trace this pro- 
cess in so many cases, that we are entitled to 
i7ifej% with Locke, that every word expressing 
i facts which do not fall under the senses, is yet 
I ultimately derived from sensible ideas, w^e cannot 

* Victor Cousin, Cours de Phil. iii. Lecon Vingtieme. 

t ^ixTLKo, i. 1. The name alligator (Spanish, el lagarto, the 
lizard) is another instance of the same kind of thing, as indeed is 
the Greek KpoKo^eLXos. 



120 AN ESSAY ON 

expect to ^9ror^ this in every particular instance. 
When a standard of value is once introduced 
among nations, it is almost always a coinage of 
the precious metals ; but when public credit is 
firmly established, a paper currency is allowed 
freely to circulate. And so in language many 
terms have become purely arbitrary, and in 
themselves valueless, which now pass unques- 
tioned in theii' conventional meaning, but have 
lost all traces of the process to which they owed 
their origin, and retain no longer the impress of 
the thought which they originally conveyed. 

Illustrations are not far to seek ; indeed, we 
can hardly utter a sentence which will not supply 
them, of which the very word " illustration " is 
itself an instance. Thus, in Hebrew, the words 
for '' anger" and "the nose " are identical,* and 
even in Greek, Trpaos ti]v ptva, " gentle in nose,'"' 
is used for '' of gentle disposition." Every 
reader of the Bible will recognise that " a melt- 
ing of the heart" is the metaphor for desj)air; 
a '' loosening of the reins " for fear ; a '' high 
carriage of the head " for pride : '' stiffness of 

* See Renan, 120 sqq. Theociit. ii. 18. The French word 
colere is from x^^^^y "bile; our word anger, from the root **ang" 
{ayxh oLyxoPT], angle, angina, angnstns, kc.) implying com- 
pression. The G-reek o-roaaxos explains itself. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 121 

j neck " for obstinacy ; " thirst " or '' pallor " for 
'fear; a ''turning of the face" for favour. It is 
I this word-painting, this eagerness^ for graphic 
touches, that gives to Hebrew its vivid, pic- 
i turesque, impetuous character. It is interesting 
, to observe how necessary to them it became. 
I Even when they have by long usage learnt to 
|| accejpt a special word as the- sign of some moral 
j sentiment or mental emotion, they love to add to 
it also a picture of the physical circumstance. 
This is the explanation of such apparent pleo- 
nasms, as '' he opened his mouth and said," 
'* he answered and said," '' he was angry and his 
visage fell," " he was angry and his visage was 
enflamed." It is the result of that vital energy 
which enkindled the soul of prophets and poets ; 
which exalted the intellect of a nation, fully 
conscious that it had a mighty mission to per- 
form. Spontaneous imagery is the characteristic 
of all passionate thought. 

The Hebrews were not the only nation which 
sought for open and confessed metaphors in their 
style, when the bright colours of the original 
picture-word had gTown too dim to recall the 

* irph ofxixdrcav ttolClv. For abundant instances of Hebrew 
metaphors see Glassii Philologia Sacra, -where there is a long 
chapter on the subject. 



122 AN ESSAY OX 

image wliicli they once presented. We feel in- 
stinctively that certain states of mind can only 
be described by a comparison with the natural 
appearance which offers the nearest analogy to 
them. '•' A lamb is innocence ; a snake is subtle 
spite. Flowers express to us the delicate affec- 
tions. Light and darkness are our familiar ex- 
pressions for knowledge and ignorance. Visible 
distance behind and before us is respectively oui' 
image of memory and of hope.*' * 

Again, to take the fii'st group of English words : 
which present themselves, what is " imagination 
or ''reflection'' but the summoning up of a picture , 
before the inward eye ? ^Vhat is ^* comprehen- 
sion ■' but a grasping; " disgust" but an unplea- 
sant taste ; '' insinuation " but a getting into the 
bosom of anything? Courage is " good heart ; " 
''rectitude'' a perpendicular position; "austerity" 
is dryness ; " superciliousness '*' a raising of the 
eyebrow; "humility" is something cognate to 
the ground; " fortune '' is the falhng of a lot; 
'^virtue'' is that which becomes a man; "hu- 
manity" is the proper characteristic of our race ; 
"courtesy" is borrowed from palaces ; "' calamity" 
is the hurrjdng of the wind among the reeds. 
What are "aversion"-^ and "inclination" but a 

* Emerson's Xature. t Compare icpUuai. hp^yoiiai. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 123 

jiurning away from, and a bending towards ? 
r Error " -is a wandering out of the way ; " envy" 
I^s looking; upon another with an evil eye; an 
'(•'* emotion " is a movement of the soul; '^in- 
jifluence'' recalls the ripple circling on the surface 
!-iof a stream ; '' heaven " is the canopy heaved over 
pjour heads ; " hell " is the holloiu space beneath our 
ifeet; "religion" is a solemn study, or a binding, 
^or a new* choice ; an " angel " is a messenger ; 
,|the " spirit " is but a breath of air. 
I; The last etymology reminds us that we can 
carry our proofs of what we assert into still 
higher regions, even the transcendental regions 
•jof human faith and worship. ''Mystery" is 
derived from '' mu," the imitation of closing the 
;ilips ; ''priest" from " presbuteros," elder; "sacra- 
'cment " is deduced from the meaning "oath;" 
1 " baptism " is dipping ; " propitiation " is bring- 
ing near; " wisdom " is that which we have seen ; 
-even the w^ord for God himself, in Sanskrit as 
;in Chinese, means but the bright ether t or 
I starry sky. 

* Tliree derivations have been proposed : re-lego, Cic. de Xat. 
Deor. ii. 28 ; re-ligo, Lact. Div. Imt. 4 ; re-eligo, Augustin, 
^de Civ, Dei, x. 3. See Fleming's Vocabulary of Philosophy. 

f See Bunsen's Outlines, ii. 142 seqq. Dyaus, deos, deus, &c., 
from the root div, to shine. The derivation of our English word 
*'God" is doubtful; but I fear the beautiful belief that it is 



124 AN ESSAY OX 

To illustrate this necessity of metaphor any- 
farther would be superfluous, since the materials 
for doing so are sufficiently abundant for any 
student who wishes to pursue the subject. The 
philosophical examination of the thoughts which 
are thus involved in concrete images is a most 
valuable inquiry, and one which opens a field of 
inexhaustible interest. The metaphors which we 
are thus forced to adopt are a living memorial* 
of the quick perceptions, the poetic intuitions, 
the deep insight of our ancestors : or are else a 
perpetuation of their unaccountable caprices of 
feeling or fancy, their vulgar errors and ground- 
less suppositions. It sometimes happens that 



deduced from **good" must be abandoned. Grimm (Deutsch 
Myth. p. 12) shows tbat tbere is a grammatical difference between 
the words intbe Teutonic language signifying '*God" and "good;" 
if the Persian ''Khoda" can be derived from the Zend ''qvadata," 
Sanskrit ''svadata," a se datuSj increatuSy a very appropriate 
etymology would be given. 

■^ See Dugald Stewart's Philosoph. Essays, p. 217, 4th ed. 
Compare the widely different conceptions of happiness involved in 
the derivations of two such words as **beatus" and *'selig." Or 
take the word "poet;" if in these days of wider knowledge and 
shallower thought, we find it nearly impossible to frame a satis- 
factory definition of poetry, how should we have been able to invent 
the word itself, which goes to the very root of the matter, by at 
once attributing to *'the maker" that divine creative faculty 
whereby he is enabled ' ' to give airy nothing a local habitation 
and a name ? " 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 125 

in all languages, the same analogy lias been 
thus seized upon for a transitive " application," 
as in the words H^"^, Trz^ei^/xa, anima, sjnrit, which 

ijall mean ^wind;' but, more frequently, different 
aspects of the same phenomenon have led to a 
different nomenclature; thus, ''to think" is in 
Hebrew " to speak ; " and among the savages of the 
Pacific it is "to speak in the stomach;" while 
in French it means *' to weigh," and in Greek it is 

[often described by a word borrowed from the 
deep purpling^ of an agitated sea. 

ij We call an expression metaphoric when it is 

! applied in such a way that we glide lightly over 
its primary and obvious meaning to attach to it 
one which is secondary and more indirect. We 
call an expression a catacliresis when it is used 

' inappropriately, although custom may have 
sanctioned the use of it in the inappropriate 
sense; e. g., when we speak of *'an arm of the 
sea," the word "arm" is a catachresis ; and when 
Shakspeare uses the phrase " To take up arms 
against a sea of troubles," it is only the use of 

j this figure twice in the same line that forces on 

! us a sense of incongruity. 

I Catachresis, as well as metaphor, has given rise 

I to a large set of terms, phrases, and expressions ; 



126 AN ESSAY ON 

and it is in one sense bolder than metaphor, be- 
cause it takes words without any modification to 
apply them to fresh emergencies. Thus, very 
often words applicable to one sense are adopted 
to exj)ress the sensations of another. That there 
is^ an analogy between the manners in which 
they are affected no one will deny. The plant 
'* hehotrope " recalls by its smell the taste which 
has given it its vulgar name ; the king of 
Hanover knew from the overture to a piece of 
music, that the scene of it was supposed to be 
a wood ; Saunderson, who was born blind, com- 
pared the colour red to the blowing of a trumpet, 
or the crowing of a cock. There is, therefore, 
no inherent absurdity, though there is much 
affectation, in such lines as Ford's — 

What's tliat 1 saic ? a sound ? 

and Donne's — 

A loud perfume ; 

and Herbert's — 

His beams shall help my song, and both so twine, 

Till e'en his beams sing and my music shine. 

It is against catachresis rather than against 
metaphor that philosophers should have in- ' 

* ''Une lumiere eclate, des couleurs orient, des idees se 
heurtent, la memoire bronche, le cceur murmure, Tobstination se 
cadre contre les difficultes." — Nodier, p. 45. 



THE OEIGIS OF LAXG-UAGE. 127 

veigiied. ^' There is," says Seneca, '* avast num- 
ber of tilings without names, which we call, not 
by x^roper designations, but bv borrowed and 
ada]3ted ones. We apply the word * foot,' both 
to our own foot and that of a couch, and of a sail, 
and of a page, though these things are naturally 
distinct. But this results from the poverty of 
language."' '*' It is a ridiculous sterility," says 
Voltaire, '* to have been ignorant how to express 
otherwise an arm of the sea, an arm of a balance, 
an arm of a chair; it is a poverty of intellect 
which leads us to speak equally of the liead of a 
nail, and the head of an army." It is this very 
frequent use of homonyms which leads to such 
great uncertainty about the meaning of many 
Hebrew words. Catachresis ought to be sparingly 
apphed, and it possesses none of the advantages 
which arise from metaphor. 

When the Megarians wanted assistance from 
the Spartans, they threw down an empty meal-bag 
before the assembly, and declared that ''it lacked 
meal." The Laconic criticism '' that the mention 
of the sack was superfluous,'' cannot be con- 
sidered a fair one, because the action gave far 
more point to the request. When the Scythian 
ambassadors wished to prove to Darius the hope- 
lessness of invading their countrv, instead of 



128 AN ESSAY ON 

making a long harangue, they argued with infi- 
nitely more force by merely bringing him a bird, 
a mouse, a frog, and two arrows, to imply, that 
unless he could soar like a bird, burrow like a 
mouse, and hide in the marshes like a frog, he 
would never be able to escape their shafts. The 
tall poppyheads that Tarquinius lopped off with 
his stick in the presence of the messenger of 
Sextus, conveyed more vividly the intended lesson 
than any amount of diabolical advice ; and 
turning* to Jewish history, we shall find that 
the prophets found it necessary to illustrate 
even their language (metaphorical as it was) by 
living pictures — the rending of a garment, the 
hiding of a girdle, the pushing with iron horns 
— in order to bring home a vivid sense of con- 
viction to the gross hearts of the people whom 
they taught. 

But when such outward illustrations are impos- 
sible, we adopt a shadow of them by painting with 
words. When we speak of the cornfields stand- 
ing so thick\with corn, that they laugh and sing ; 
when we speak of the harvests thirsting, or of the 
green fields sleeping in the quiet sunshine ; when 
we speak of the thunderbolts of eloquence, or the 

* For the facts alluded to in tMs passa,ge, see Herod, iii. 46, 
iv. 132. Liv. i. 54. Jerem. xix. 10, &c. 



THE OKIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 129 

dewy close of tender music, our language is 
understood perhaps with more rapidity, and 
our meaning expressed with greater clearness, 
than if we were to translate the same phrases 
into more prosaic and less imaginative ex- 
pression. 

Even the unimaginative ^Aristotle observed 
the fact. Mere names, he says, carry to the 
mind of the hearer their specific meanings and 
there they end ; but metaphors do more than 
this, for they awaken new thoughts. Let us take 
Aristotle's own example of the word " age," and 
instead of Solomon's fine expression, '' when the 
almond-tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper 
be a burden," substitute ^' when the hair is 
white, and the body decrepit;" who does not 
see that the force and poetry of the passage is 
evaporated at once ? 

And, in point of fact, we do not go at all nearer 
to truth by a substitution of terms that imply no 
direct figure. Eloquence, for instance, has in 
all ages been compared to thundert and lightning, 
because the effect of it upon the mind is closelj^ 
analogous to that produced by the bursting of a 

* Arist. Met. iii. 10. 

f ri(jT pa.TTT , i^povra, Kai/^Kma rrju 'EAAaSo. — Aristoph. ' ' Proinde 
tona eloquio." — Yirg. ^n. xi. 



130 AN ESSAY ON 

storm ; and vrlien. out of dislike to such expres- 
sions, we talk of eloquence as having been pas- 
sionate, or forcible, or effective, the impres- 
sions we convey are not nearly so powerful, or 
nearly so descriptive. And in many cases we 
must rest content to leave our emotions unex- 
pressed, if we will not condescend to use the 
assistance of figurative terms. ''Language,'' 
says Mr. Carlyle, ''is the flesh-garment of 
Thought. I said that Imagination wove this flesh- 
garment; and does she not? Metaphors are her 
stuff. Examine Language. AMiat, if you except 
some few primitive elements (of natural sound), 
what is it all but metanhors recognised as such, 
or no longer recognised ; still fluid and florid, 
or now solid-grown and colourless ? If those 
same primitive elements are the osseous fixtures 
in the flesh-crarment. Lano;ua£:e — then are meta- 
phors its muscles, and tissues, and living integu- 
ments. An unmetaphorical style you shall in 
vain seek for : is not your very attention^ a 
stretching-to ? " 

^ Sartor Resartus, eh, x. Compare Hey se. s. 97. ^'Diegatize 
Sprache ist dnrcli imd durcli "bildlich. "Wir sprechen in lanter- 
Bildem oline tuis dessen bevusst zn sein." He gives atimdant 
instances, classified witli German accnracy. See, too. Grimm, 
GescJi. d. d. Sprache, s. 56 ff. Pott, Metaphem vom Lehen, kc. 
Zeitsdcr. furYergleich. Sproxhf. JaJirg, IL Eeft. 2. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 131 

Our minds are simply not adapted to deal 
familiarly -with the abstract ; we yearn for the 
concrete, and the successful adoption of it often 
constitutes the power and beauty of rhetoric and 
poetry. For the attributes of poetry cannot 
better be summed up than by saying with Milton, 
that it is ^* simple, sensuous, passionate." It has 
been said, that '' good writing and brilliant dis- 
course are perpetual allegories." The Bible 
more than any other book abounds in this energy 
of style, this matchless vivacity of description; 
and hence of all books it is the most fresh and 
living, the one which speaks most musically to 
the ear, most thrillingiy to the heart, — the one 
whose rich bloom of eloquence is least dimmed 
by being transfused into other tongues, and the 
rapid wings of its Vvords the least broken and 
injured by the process of many hundred years. 
The idioms of all language approach each other 
most nearly in passages of the greatest eloquence 
and power : here the sjdlogism of emotion tran- 
scends the syllogism of logic, and grammatical 
formulae are fused and calcined in the flame of 
passion. 

This concreteness of style, and liberal use of 
simple metaphor, is nowhere so beautifully con- 
spicuous as in the teaching of our Lord, and he 

K 2 



132 AN ESSAY ON 

doubtless adopted it for the express purpose 
that— 

They might learn -^ho bind the sheaf, 
Or crush the grape, or dig the grave, 
And those wild eyes that ^Yatch the wave 

In roarings round the coral reef. 

''Consider the *lilles how they grow; they toil 
not, they spin not ; and yet I say unto you that 
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like 
one of these. If, then, God so clothe the grass, j 
which to-day is in the field, and to-morrow is ^ 
cast into the oven, how much more will he clothe 'j 
you, oh ye of little faith !" :' 

''Let us here adopt," says Dr. Campbell, " a 
little of the tasteless manner of modern para- 
phrasts, by the substitution of more general 
terms, one of their many processes of infrigi- 
dating, and let us observe the effect produced by 
this change. ' Consider the flowers how they 
gradually increase in their size ; they do no manner 
of work, and yet I declare unto you, that no king 
whatever, in his most splendid habit, is dressed 
up like them. If, then, God in his providence 
doth so adorn the vegetable productions which 
continue but a little time on the land, and are 
afterwards devoted to the meanest uses, how 

* Luke, xii. 27. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 133 

much more will lie provide clothing for you!' 
How spiritless* is the same sentiment rendered by 
these small variations ! The very particularising 
of to-day and to-morrow is infinitely more ex- 
pressive of transitoriness than any description 

f wherein the terms are general, that can be sub- 

jl stituted in its room." 

Philosophers, then, have been mistaken in com- 
plaining of metaphors as a proof t of poverty. 
Tropes, it has been said, would disappear, if we 
had in every case a direct and independent ex- 
pression, and metaphor is a coin struck only for 
the earth. How this may be we know not; 
although, if there be mysteries even for the 
angels, then for them also will the gracious ana- 
logies of a sublime symbolism be no less neces- 
sary. For us at any rate, since it is impossible 
to find a direct word for every phenomenon, 

■' ]\Ir. Kingsley has compared the ancient ballad, 
* * Coiild harp a fish out of the "v^ater. 
Or music out of the stane, 
Or the milk out of a maiden's breast 
That bairns had never nane," 
■^'ith the modem adaptation, 

' ' there vras magic in his voice, 
And -witchcraft in his string ! " 
The expression of Herodotus about the Libyan wild asses, ^.ttotol, 
oh yap dr] iripovcn, contrasts forcibly the two styles. — R. G. 

^ **Verborum translatio instituta est inopi^ causa." — De 
Orator, iii. 39. 



134 AX ESSAY ON 

metaplior is our only resource ; the figure is 
necessitated by the non-existence of the proper 
term. Because poetry abounds in figures, it does 
not follow that it is '' the dark murmur of a lie, 
instead of the clear cry of truth," but that it deals 
for the most part with thoughts which transcend 
the exigencies of ordinary expression. "We must 
not complain of the lunar beam of genius, be- 
cause it has not the brightness of the sun. Our 
choice lies between an enchanting and beautiful 
twilight, or a darkness which may be felt. 

If any one wishes to compare the difi'erence 
between metaphorical language and the phraseo- 
logy which studiously avoids the use of metaphor, 
and clings as far as possible to bare fact, let 
him contrast the nomenclature of science with 
the parallel nomenclature of the people. 

The terminology of science is of necessity 
" conventional,* precise^ constant ; copious in 
words and minute in distinctions, according to 
the needs of the science ; " but this very neces- 
sity kills the imagination, and leaves an unin- 
viting argot in the place of warm and glowing 
human speech. It is absurd to quarrel with and 
ridicule the language of science, since in its 

* Dr. Wliewell's Philos. of the Inductive Sciences, ii. 460. 
Mill's Zo^zc, ii. ck iv. p. 205. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 135 

researches an inaccurate or ill-defined name — 
a name that connotes many other things, or in 
itself involves an unproven theory — may be pro- 
ductive of the most disastrous consequences. 
But, at the same time, the mere nomenclature, 
in becoming steady and determinate, is too often 
uncouth and inharmonious,* and we see that if 
the language of common life were equally in- 
variable, and unelastic, imagination would be 
cancelled, and genius crushed. Metaphor is no 
longer possible in a language which has the 
power of expressing everything. Such " lexical 
superfetations " as " chrj^santhemum leutanthe- 
mum," and '^platykeros,'' may be necessary to 
science, but who would exchange them for the 
popular names of '^ Reine Marguerite," and 
'^ Stagbeetle " {cerf volant) ? And is there not 
something almost repulsive in such a term as 

^ Take, for instance, fhe "botanical description of the Hymeno- 
pliyllum Wilsoni ; ' ' fronds rigid, pinnate, pinnse recurred snbuni- 
lateral, pinnatifid ; tlie segments linear nndiTided, or bifid spinu- 
lososerrate." — Philosophy of Ind. Sci. i. 165. TMs is the per- 
fection of scientific terminology, but bow would it answer the 
purposes of common life ? And bow would poetry be possible with 
such clumsy terms as these ? At the same time, in Science, diy 
precision of nomenclature is better than poetical terms like the 
mediaeval '* flowers of sulphur." Fancy would only mislead in 
terminology which requires accuracy ; e. g. ^iirovSy the Greek name 
for jerboa, might easily have led to mistakes. 



136 AX ESSAY ON 

^^Myosotis scorpioeides " (scorpion-shaped mouse's 
ear !) when compared with the sweet vulgar names 
''Forget-me-not," ''Yeux de la Sainte Vierge," 
and "Plus je vous vois, plus je vous aime ? " The 
language of science is only picturesque, when, as 
in the case of astronomy, it borrows from shep- 
herd philosophers such names as the " chariot," 
*'the serpent,^' "the bear," and "the milky way." 
Language, then, is a plummet* which can never 
fathom the abysses of existence ; and yet by its 
means we can learn more of the world of spirit 
than the senses can ever tell us about the visible 
and the material. When we speak of any sen- 
sible object, we only adopt a convenient name 
for a certain synthesis of properties, and we do 
not thereby advance a single step towards the 
knowledge of the thing in its abstract essence. 
The very existence of substance as an absolute 
entity, an ens per se existens, the postulated 
residuum after the abstraction of allf separate 
qualities which are cognisable by the senses, is 
entirely denied by idealists, who would reduce 
all outward things to a m.ere relation, or a 
modification of the sentient subject. Nature 
itself is with them nothing more than " an 

"^^ Sir Thos, Browne, Christian MoralSj ii. 

^ Perkeley, Principles of Hum. Knov)ledge^ xxxv. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 137 

apocalypse of the mind." We speak of "gold," 

and we mean thereby an object of which 

perhaps our first and main conceptions are that 

it is heavy, yellow, and valuable as a medium 

of exchange ; yet the property which we call 

i" heavy" is one which we can easily conceive 

jj capable of modification ; the property of yellow- 

t ness ceases when light no longer falls upon 

I, the metal ; and the property of value is one 

ji purely conventional and continually varying. 

'i What, then, have we left except a philosophical 

figment — a something with the properties of 

nothing ? We cannot assert the existence of 

any substance corresponding to the name '' gold '* 

I apart from these and other properties, which, as 

v/e have seen, are mere relations. What, then, 

do we realty learn from language even about the 

external world, the w^oiid of phenomena and of 

fact ? When, on the other hand, we speak of 

^' imagination," we name one of the noblest 

faculties of the intellect, from the analogy 

afforded by the property of the glassy wave, 

which "refreshes and reflects" the flowers upon 

its banks ; yet who shall say that our metaphor 

("imagination") gives us a less clear* and 

* '*It is remarked by a great metaphysician, that abstract ideas 
are, in one point of view, the highest and most philosophical of all 



138 AN ESSAY ON 

definable conception than is conveyed by our 
general term C gold ") ? 

Nothing can be known of itself, but sensible 
things can only be named from the manner in 
which they affect the senses, and things invisible 
can only be pictured forth analogically, from the 
manner in which they affect the soul. And God 
has given us an intellect capable of observing the 
analogies of which the world is full, and not only 
of observing them, but of applying to them with 
perfect comprehension the words by which we 
describe our physical sensations. In the wise 
and noble language of the son^^' of Sirach : '^ All 

THINGS ARE DOUBLE ONE AGAINST ANOTHER, AND 
HE HATH MADE NOTHING IMPERFECT." There is 

a close, though mysterious, analogy between 
I)hysical and intellectual phenomena. The con- 
tinual metaj)hors by which we compare our 
thoughts and emotions to the changes of the 

our ideaSj vrhile in anotlier tLey are the sliallowest and most 
meagre. They have the advantage of clearness and definiteness ; 
they enable ns to conceive and, as it were, to span the infinity of 
things ; they arrange, as it might he in the divisions of a glass, 
the many-coloured world of phenomena. And yet they are *mere' 
abstractions, removed from sense, removed from experience, and 
detached from the mind in which they arose. Their perfection 
consists, as theii' very name implies, in their idealism ; that is, in 
their negative nature." — Jowett o?i Romans^ &c., ii. S8. 
* Ecclus. xlii. 23. 



THE OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 139 

outer world — sadness to a cloudy sky, calm 
to the silvery rays of the moonlight, anger to 
waves agitated by the wind — are not, as Schel- 
ling observed, a mere play of the imagination, 
but are an expression in two different languages 
of the same thought of the Creator, and the one 
serves to interpret the other. '^ Nature is visible 
spirit, spirit invisible nature." It could have 
been no result of accident, no working of blind 
chance, that made the mind of man a mirror of 
the things whereby he is surrounded, and that 
created the world of matter under the guidance 
of laws which are an exact analogon of the laws 
of mind. Thus the Universe itself, with all that 
it contains, is a mighty emblem, and man is the 
analogist who, by the Word that lighteth him, is 
enabled to decipher it. 

Two worlds are ours : 'tis only sin 

Forbids us to descry 
The mystic heaven and earth within 

Plain as the sea and sky. 

The stars and the mountains, the oceans and 
winds, may exist for nobler and sublimer pur- 
poses than '' to furnish man with the dictionary 
and grammar of his municipal speech," but for its 
at least it should be our first and chief cause of 
thankfulness to God when we commemorate the 



HO AN ESSAY ON 

glories of the world in which he has placed us, 
that it is by the reflection of those glories that 
we gi'ow conscious of ourselves, exactly as it is 
by the reverberation of a luminous ray that 
we become aware of the presence of holy 
Light. 

But, in those primeval ages which saw the 
birth of language, the instinctive j^^i'ception of 
this harmony, and the application of the per- 
ceived analogy to the purposes of language, was 
far more quick and Auvid than it can be now^ 
when our minds are obscured by discussion, 
dried up by logic, and too often choked by the 
unnecessary gold of a vocabulary inexhaustible 
and ready made. *'' As we go back in history," 
says Mr. Emerson. '' language becomes more 
picturesque, until its infancy, when it is all 
poetry ; or all spiritual facts are represented by 
natural symbols." To the primal man his words 
were like the fragments of coloured glass in the 
kaleidoscope, readily admitting of a thousand 
new uses, *^ changing theii' place and their effect 
with every emotion which agitated his language, 
and lending themselves with a lustre ever-new 
to all the new combinations of his thought." 

The dawn of language took place in the bright 
infancy, in the joyous boyhood of the world; the 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE . 141 

glory-clouds still lingered among the valleys, 
upon the hills, and those splendors of creative 
power which had smitten asunder the mists that 
swathed the primeval chaos had not yet ceased 
to quiver in the fresh and radiant air. Every- 
thing was new ; the soil was clad in the vernal 
luxuriance of green and untrodden herbage, and 
a blissful innocence gave to the new child of 
Heaven a life of '' happy yesterdays and confident 
to-morrows." He looked at all things with the 
large open eyes of childish wonderment, and the ^^ 
simplest facts of the eternal Order were to him 
miraculous events. To him *'the warmth, the 
west wind, the ornaments of springtide returned 
unforeseen, and the sunrise, was but a long 
phenomenon which might in the morning fail the 
longings of night. If an arch of resplendent 
colours unfolded itself from heaven to earth, and 
there broke into a shower of brilliant atoms, 
sowing the soil with a dust of precious stones, it 
announced a message and a promise of God. 
If the moon disappeared in an eclipse, it was 
devoured by a black dragon ; the thunder w^as the 
wrath of the Almighty, and the manna was his 
bread. The adolescent race had all the delicacy 
of tact, and all the freshness of sentiment, which 

* Nodier, p. 58 sqq. 



142 AN ESSAY OX 

in youthful souls identifies itself with the poetry 
of things. In fact, life was itself a looesy full of 
mystery and full of grace." 

And this delicacy of tact, this youthfulness of 
sensation, this ever-fresh capacity for that wonder 
which is the parent of all knowledge and all 
thought, was allied most closely to religion and to 
poetic insight. '^ They seem to me," says Plato,* 
^^to frame a right genealogy, w^ho make Iris the 
daughter of Thaumas." 

Upon the breast of new-created earth 

Man walked ; and when and wheresoe'er he moved, 

Alone or mated, — solitude was not. 

He heard, borne on the wind, the articulate voice 

Of Grod, and Angels to his sight appeared 

Crowning the glorious hills of Paradise ; 

Or through the groves gliding like morning mists 

Enkindled by the sun. He sate and talked 

With winged messengers who daily brought 

To his small island in the ethereal deep 

Tidings of joy and love. From those pure heights 

(Whether of actual vision, sensible 

To thought and feeling, or that in this sort 

Have condescendingly heen shadoived forth 



^' '^EoLKep 6 rrjv '^Ipiv @avjj,auTos 'inyovov <p7)(ras ou KaKws y^v^a- 
Xoyfiv. — Plato, Thecet. p. 155. 

*' La maraviglia 
Bell ignoranza e la figlia 
E del sapere 

La madre." 



THE OKIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 143 

Communications spiritually maintained, 
And intuitions moral and divine) 
Fell human kind — to banishment condemned 
Tliat flowing years repealed not. 

For what is religion but reverence, and love, and 
worship ? And what is poetry but the delicate 
perception of new truths, and new relations — the ' 
eloquent ^' soliloquy 'of wonder and of thought ? 
" In wonder t all philosophy began ; in wonder it 
ends ; and admiration fills up the interspace. 
But the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance ; 
the last is the parent of adoration. The first is 
the birth-throe of our knowledge ; the last is its 
euthanasy and apotheosis." 

To the early language nothing was common or 
unclean, as to the youthful nations nothing was 
vulgar. With them it vv^as no degradation for a 
king to labour in his vineyard and tend his flocks, 
or for a princess to join her maidens in washing 
the palace-clothes. Homer describes the cooking 
of a dish or the cleansing of a chamber with. the 
same minute circumstantiality, with the same 
lively yet dignified delight, with the same sense 
that everything human has its own divine side, 
as he describes the falling of a hero, or the 

* Mr. I\Iill was the first to point out the soliloquising character 
of poetry. — Essays and Dissertations. 
f Coleridge, Aids to Reflection. 



144 AN ESSAY ON 

armour of a god. And the feeling whicli inspired 
him with this catholicity of admiration for every 
human action was a right and noble one ; it Vv^as 
the same feeling which actuated the Christian 
poet in the quaint lines — 

A servant in tliis cause 

]\rakes service half divine ; 
"Who sweeps a room as for thy laws 

]\rakes that, and the action, fine. 

It is only in the fastidious conventionality of later 
ages that a false shame quenches enthusiasm, and , 
" the quotidian ague of frigid impertinences " 
infects the healthy veins of our mental constitu- 
tion. Then it is that reverence perishes, and; 
simple acts must be veiled in metaphysical eu- 
phuisms, and simple thoughts overlaid with > 
galimatias, with tortured acceptations, with un- 
couth archaisms. *It* must always be the same. 
After the beautiful period of Spanish literature, 
come Gongora and his cultorists ; after Tasso 
and Ariosto, the Chevalier Marin and his pale 
cortege of mannered seicentisti, armed with points 
and conceits ; after Shakspeare, 6zy9/iias??i; after' 
the admirable French of the sixteenth century, - 
after the language of Eabelais, of Des Periers, 
of Marot, of Henri Estienne, of Amyot, of 

* Nodier. 



THE OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 145 

Montaigne, comes '^preciosite/'* so vain, so 
affected, so puerile, so pretentious, so unreal, 
so false.' 

Thus the language of nations is the type of 
their moral as well as of their intellectual cha- 
racter. As long as men are noble and simple, 
their language will be rich in power and truth ; 
when they fall into corruption and sensuality, 
f- their words will degenerate into the dingy and 
f miserable counters, which have no intrinsic value, 
' and only serve as a worthless and conventional 
medium of exchange. In the pedantry of Statins, 
in the puerility of Martial, in the conceits of 
,, Seneca, in the poets who could go into emulous 
'raptures on the beauty of a lap-dog, and the 
[ apotheosis of a eunuch's hair, we read the hand- 
writing of an empire's condemnation. Even a 
ipastt literature is full of power to save a people 
from utter degeneracy. It is the true poet after 
all who, more than the financier, more than the 

merchant, more than the statesman, more than 

i: 

* See Precieiose and Precieuses par Ch. L. Li vet. 12°, 1860. 
iRIasson's Introduction to French Liter ature^ ch. iv. 

+ **Aiicl tlie regeneration of a people is always accompanied by 
e, rekindled interest in its early literature." We can hardly over- 
irate the effect produced hy the publication of Bishop Percy's 
EeliqueSj and much may be hoped from the reproduction of the 
Did romancers, &c. , in Spanish, of late years, 

L 



146 AN ESSAY ON 

tlie soldier, saves his countiymen from ruin, 
elevates their conduct by purifying their thoughts, 
keeps their feet upon the mountain, and turns 
their eyes towards the sun. 

We must be free or die, vrho speak tlie tongue 
That Skakspeare spoke, the faith and morals hold 
That MHton held ! 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 147 



CHAPTEE YII. 

WORDS NOTHING IN THEINISEL^^S. 

*' Credibilius est, quia prsssens est eis, quantum id capere 
possunt, Lumen Rationis -eternje, ubi lisec immutabilia vera con- 
spiciunt." — S. Augtjstin, Ret. i. 4. 

•'It may lead us a little," says Locke, '^to- 
wards the original of all our notions and know- 
ledge, if we remark how gTeat a dependence our 
words have on common sensible ideas ; and how 
those which are made use of to stand for actions 
and notions quite removed from sense, have their 
rise from thence, and from obvious sensible ideas 
are transferred to more abstruse significations, 
and made to stand for ideas that come not under 
•ithe cognizance of oiir senses." 

So far we may seem to have been adducing 

I a crowd of illustrations in support of this state- 

liment: for we have traced the germinal develop- 

^ment of language from the seed and root of 

onomatopoeia to the various ramifications of 

metaphor, and have seen convincing reason to 

* Essay on Human Vnder standing, iii. i. 6. 

L 2 



148 AN ESSAY ON 

infer the i3rimaiy origin of all words from 
sensible ideas. 

Are we then obliged to give in our adherence 
to the sensational philosophy, and to believe 
that " Nature, even in the naming of things, una- 
wares suggested to men the originals and princi- 
]3les of all their knowledge ?" Are we forced to 
accept the dogma that " there is nothing in the 
intellect, which has not previous^ existed in the 
sense?" 

Such are the questions which must now be 
considered, because these are the conclusions 
usually drawn from the premisses, which have 
been hitherto receiving our support. The discus- 
sion of them cannot be considered a digression, 
because it will lead us at least to recognise the 
existence of problems which are of the pro- 
foundest importance, the examination of which 
must always bear reference to the facts of lan- 
guage, and especially to its origin and history. 
The space devoted by Locke to the development of 
his views on the use and abuse of words is a suffi- 
cient proof that we are not wilfully turning aside 
from the direct discussion of the subject before 
us. Indeed, it is the assertion of one of Locke's 
acutest* and most admiring disciples, that the | 

* Eorne Tooke, Part i. cL. ii. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 149 

whole of the Essay on the Human Understanding 
is "little more than a philosophical account of 
the first sort of abbreviations in language." 

Before we reject the conclusion which may 
seem to have been involved in the facts which we 
have endeavoured to establish, it may be well to 
mark the full consequences which the sensation- 
alists were gradually led to adopt. Locke, in 
defining the source of our ideas, had distinctly 
acknowledged an internal sense, which he calls 
reflection, as being necessary to complement the 
work of sensation ; in the very passage which we 
quoted at the commencement of this chapter, he 
goes on to say that we have " no ideas at all, but 
what originally came eithei^ from sensible objects 
without, or what we feel within ourselves from the 
imvard tvorkings of our oivn spirits of ivhich we 
are conscious to ourselves v:ithiny Similarlj^, 
Bishop Berkeley, in his Theory of Vision, very 
clearly lays down 'Hhat there are properly no 
ideas or passive objects in the mind but what are 
derived from sense, hut there are, besides these, her 
own acts and operations ; — such are notions." 

But of that element of our thoughts which he 
called reflexion, Locke, although he barely as- 
serted its existence, made so little use that it 
hardly counteracted the general tendency of his 



150 AN ESSAY ON 

philosophy. '^ When* a term so wide and vague, 
or so complex and multifarious, so thin and 
shadowy, or so ponderous and unmanageable, ^ 
as this ^reflexion' is introduced side by side \ 
with the clear, bodily, definite realities of the 
senses (sensation), it can hardly hold its place 
securely as a philosophical term." Accord- 
ingly we are not surprised to find that Locke 
was claimed as the founder t of a sensationalist 
school, whose ultimate conclusions his calm and 
pious mind would have indignantly repudiated. 

But it was in France that the Essay on 
Human Understanding was received with the 
most enthusiastic applause ; and when the meta- 
physics of Locke had once '' crossed the channel 
on the light and brilliant wings of Voltaire's imagi- 
nation," sensationalism reigned for a long period 
without a rival near the throne. Etienne de 
Condillac was the philosopher who was mainly 
instrumental in introducing to his countrymen 
the speculations of the great English thinker; 
and it is an interesting fact that in Condillac's 
first work, ^'L'Essai sur I'Origine des Connais- 



* Dr. Whe^ell, Hist, of New Phil in Eng. p. 72. 

f "We consider this on tlie ^hdle a less objectionable term than 
'* sensualist" or "sensuist;" the latter Trord is Tmcoiith, and the 
former, from the things which it connotes, is hardly fair. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 151 

sances Humaines," 1746), he had not yet thought 
of ^'simplifying" Locke's system, by discarding 
reflexion as an element of knowledge. But eight 
years after, in his '^ Traite des Sensations," he 
states, in the broadest possible manner, that the 
senses are the source not only of our knowledge, 
but even (monstrous as it may appear) of our 
intellectual faculties themselves! And as he 
makes the faculty of speech the principle of supe- 
riority of men over animals, he is involved in the 
vicious^ circle of considering language to be, at 
the same time and in the same sense, a cause and 
an effect of thought. This system found its most 
wonderful illustration in the too-famous descrip- 
tion of the statue-man ; a being, who, so far from 
being capable of acquiring memory, and judgment 
and thought, would even be incapable of any- 
thing, except mere organic impressions,! because 
it could have had no will whereby to contrast its 
personality with the action of external causes. 

So far is it from being true, that there is 
nothing in the intellect which has not previously 



* See V. Cousin, Cours d^HUtoire de la PhiL Morale. 

+ o^T€ TTiS ^I'^X'^^ X^iov rh alorOduecrdaL ovre rod crwjULaros. — Arist. 
de Somno, i. 5. *' Sensation is not an affection of mind alone, 
nor of matter alone, but of an animated organism, i. e. of mind and 
matter united." — Mansell's Metaphysics, p. 92. 



152 AN ESSAY ON 

been in the sense, that even our conception of 
matter* itself is derived from a superior source, 
and would without the intellect be one at which 
we could not arrive. The senses themselves can 
tell us nothing except in so far as they are " the 
scribest of the soul." 

It might have been thought that sensationalism 
itself could go no farther than Condillac, but it 
found exponents still more audacious in Helvetius 
and St. Lambert. According to the former, man 
is merely an animal superior to other animals 
because of the greater perfection of the organs 
with which he has been endowed ; according to 
the latter, man, when born, is only an organised 
sensible mass; and the first objects which strike 
our senses give us our first ideas, until thus, 
gradually, Nature has created the soul within us. 
We are hardly surprised after this to find that 
Helvetius considers love to be only the feeling of 



* *'n n'y a rien dans rintelligence qui ait passe par les sens ; 
rien, pas nieme Tidee des sens !" — Charma, Essai sur le Langage, 
p. 34. This is far truer than the assertion of D'Alembert, that 
*' the object of Metaphysics is to examine the origin of ideas, and 
to prove that they all come from our sensations." — EUm. de 
Philos. p. 143. 

+ 'H fxvriixT) Ta7s alaOrjaecn crv/x'TTLiTrovcra eh ravrov. . .(pcLivovrai 
jxoL ax^^ov oTov ypdcpeLU 7]fj.uy iw raTs xj/vxous rore \6yovs. — Plat. 
Philehus, p. 192. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 153 

a need, courage to be the fear of death (!), and 
j"Do what is useful" to be the moral rule; and 
that St. Lambert avows openly, that pleasure and 
pain are the masters of man, so that the object of 
life will be to seek the one, and avoid the other. 

Are we obliged by our theory respecting the 
origin of language to accept any of these conclu- 
sions ? Must we say, with Condillac, that 
'^ science is only a well-constructed language ? " 
or with M. Destutt de Tracy, that ''thought* is 
sensation ? " or (to go back to the cradle of these 
materialist imaginings), must we believe, with the 
old sophist, that "man"!- is the measure of all 
things ? " that there is no eternal right or truth ? 
that justice and turpitude are the result not of 
divine instinct, but of association, habit, custom, 
convention ? Must all morality be founded, with 
Occam, ^ on the result of an arbitrary decree ? and 
must we believe, with Home Tooke, that truth is 
simply and purely relative, since its derivation is 
supposed to imply that it is merely what one 
'' troweth ? " 

* Penser c'est sentir. 

f -KavTOiv (xerpov avOpcaTTos. — Protagoras, 
i "^ We aUude to his monstrous hyperbole 'Hhat it would be our 
•duty to hate God if hidden to do so by Him," which is merely 
^equivalent to the sycophant's excuse, irav to 7r^=ax^e^ y^^o toG 
izpoTOvvTos OiKaioy. 



154 AN ESSAY ON 

To establlsli such conclusions was the cUrect 
object of Home Tooke in his "Diversions of 
Puiiey," * and it is astonishing that he should have 
met with such complete success. A certain Dutch- ( 
manf had preceded him in the same line of 
argument ; abusing the fact that the terms of 
theology, morals, and metaphysics, are originally 
derived from material images, he turned theology 
and the Christian faith into ridicule in a little 
Dutch dictionary, in which he gave to words, not 
such definitions as usage demands, but such as 
seemed to carrj^ a malignant inference drawn i 
from the original meaning ; and since he had . 
shown marks of impiety elsewhere, they say 
that he was punished for it in the Easpel- 
Huyss. 

Far different was the acceptance given to the 
"Diversions of Purley," which to this day is 
praised and quoted, although a recent philologist 
has not scrupled to affirm that Tooke's " alluring | 
speculations will not bear the light of advancing 

* On the title of Home Tooke's treatise, *^ Winged Words, or 
Language not only the Vehicle of Thought, hut the Wheels," see 
Coleridge. Aids to Refl. p. xv. 

f Leibnitz, Nouv. Ess. The passage is quoted hy Dr. Donald- 
son, New Crat» ch. iii., where the reader will find some admirable 
remarks on the subject of this chapter. 

X Mr. Wedgwood's Etym, Diet. p. ii. 



THE OHIGIX OF LANGUAGE. 155 

knowledge, and it is hardli/ too much to say that 
there is not a sound etymology in the luorky No 
one lias done more to overthrow his baseless 
fabric than the late Mr. Garnett,^ in an article on 
' English Lexicography, who has shown in parti- 
cular that the details of his much-yaunted analysis 
of the particles maj' be contested more often than 
\ admitted, and indeed that his theory contains very 
^ little that can be safely relied upon. Tooke seems 
\ to have been led to his system by the conjecture 
' that '' if " is equivalent to '^gif," an imperative of 
the verb '^ to give ;" but as the cognate forms in 
other languages prove that this particle has no 
connection whatever either with the verb " to give " 
or with any other verb (a fact which was proved by 
Dr. Jamieson in his Scottish Dictionary), '' any 
system founded on this basis is a mere castle in 
the air." *^ According to Plutarch," says Mr. Gar- 
nett, " the Delphian EI supported the tripod of 
truth ; we fear that Tooke's if imjperative led him 
into a labyrinth of error." 

Again, let us take the etymologj^ by which 

Tooke endeavours to explode the common notion 

of truth. He assumes that the word 'truth' is 

I merely a contraction of " troweth," and that 

f'^trow" simply denotes to think or believe, 

* Essays, p. 18 seqq. 



156 AN ESSAY ON 

The inferences are as follows : " Truth* sup- 
poses mankind; for whom and hy whom alone 
the word is formed, and to whom alone it is 
applicable. If no man, then no truth. There : 
is no such thing as eternal, immutable, ever- 
lasting truth, unless mankind, such as they 
are at present, be also eternal, immutable, and 
everlasting. Two persons may contradict each 
other, and yet both speak truth, for the truth 
of one person may be opposite to the truth of 
another." Here we are removed at once from 
the solid basis of certainty and conviction to the 
shifting deserts and treacherous waves of con- 
jecture and doubt ; and the etymologist would 
reduce morality and religion to shadowy super- 
structures built upon moving and trembling 
sands. Even if the derivation were admissible • 
we should reject the conclusion, but the etymo- 
logy is as erroneous as the inference drawn ' 
from it is dangerous and false. Mr. Garnett, with 
infinitely more probability, derives truth '' from the 
Sanskrit dhrii, to be established — fixum esse ; 
whence dhruiva, certeim, i,e,, established ; German, 
tr alien, to rely, trust ; treu, faithful, true ; Anglo - 
Saxon, treoio — treoivth {fides); English, true, 
truth. To these we may add Gothic, triggons ; 

* Diversions of Purley, Part ii. ch. v. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 157 

Icelandic, trygge ; (fidus, securus, tutus) : all from 
the same root, and all conveying the same idea of 
stability or security. Truth, therefore, neither 
means what is thought nor what is saidy but that 

\ which is ijermanent, stable, and is and ought to 

I be relied ujjon, because, upon sufficient data, it is 
capable of being demonstrated or shown to exist. 

I If we admit this explanation, Tooke's asser- 
tions .... hecome Vox et r)rceterea nihil. In all 

! inquiries after truth, the question is, not what 
people, w^ho may or may not be competent to 
form an opinion, think or believe, but what grounds 
they have for believing it." * 

The question how mind can be affected by 

, matter has in all ages been a problem of philo- 
sophy. Descartes accounted for it by occasional 
causes; Leibnitz, by pre-established harmony; 

j Malebranche, by a vision of all things in God ; 
Kant, by the existence of innate ideas. However 
the question be resolved, it is closely analogous 
to the question, 'how can things immaterial! 
and unsubstantial like thought and conception 
be represented, and for all practical purposes 

( adequately represented by things physical, ix., 
by j)ulsations and modifications of the ambient 
air?' 

* Essays, p. 28. t See Tinet, Essais, p. 349. 



158 AN ESSAY ON 

Idealism denies the existence of an external I-' 
"world, and obtrudes on us in its stead '' a world 
of spectres and apparitions ; " materialism denies 
us the possession of any ideas but those which we 
have derived from sense, and thus deprives us of 
all belief in an eternal and pre-existing truth; 
between the two we lose alike *Hhe starry heaven ^ 
above, and the moral Jaw within." But neither 
of these systems can derive any real suj^port from 
the phenomena of language, which indeed in no 
way affect the considerations they involve. For if 
confessedly our words have nothing to tell us, and 
can tell us nothing about the world of phenomena, 
and yet the common sense of mankind forces us 
to believe in the existence of that outer world, 
then it can be no argument against the existence 
of noiiinena, i.e., against the existence of eternal 
ideas and necessary truths, that the words 
which we apply to our conceptions of immaterial 
entities are borrowed from the analogy which 
those conceptions offer to the objects surround- 
ing us in the world of sense. " ^Mien we 
impose on a phenomenon of the physical order a 
moral denomination, we do not thereby spiii- 
tualise matter ; and because we assign a physical 
denomination to a moral phenomenon, we do not 
materialise spirit. Let us not from these appel- 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 159 

.lations, more or less inexact, draw conclusions 
teither as to the nature of our ideas or the essence 
,iof things." 

Even if it were possible that we could invent 

names for each separate particle of matter in the 

material universe, we should know nothing of any 

one particle except that it causes (or, perhaps, 

||we ought to say no more than that it is) a modi- 

ijfication of ourselves; and yet we believe that 

ikhere is a non-ego entirely and wholly inde- 

! pendent of the ego, though it may in no way 

\ resemble our notions respecting it. Why then 

may we not equally believe in the independent 

{: absolute existence of ideas which correspond to 

h our terms, — truth and justice, goodness and 

beauty, space and time ? 

A shower falls while the sun is shining, and 
i we are conscious of a sensation which presents to 
; us an arch shining with the divided perfection of 
seven-fold light to which we have given the name 
Rainbow. But what does the name teach us 
of the thing itself ? It is not even a name for the 
thing itself, but only for the effect it produces 
upon us ; indeed for us, the very existence of the 
object is its perception, '^its esse is 'perciinJ'' Not 

* Kant, quoted by CLalybaus, Sj)ecidative Philosophy, Tr. 
Tulk. p. 31. 



160 AX ESSAY OX 

only is the coloured arch, a phenomenon existing 
merely for ns and our visual sense, but the very 
raindrops are only empirical phenomena, and 
-'their* round shai)e — nay, even the space in 
which they are formed, are nothing in themselves 
but a mere modification or principle of our sen- 
suous intuition ; with all this, however, the object 
itself remains to us completely unknown." ^Ve 
cannot even say that our conception of the object 
is in any waj^ like the object itself: can pain, for 
instance, resemble the pricking of a pin ? Such 
language, as Bp. Berkeley showed long ago, is a 
mere contradiction in terms ; for '^ an idea can 
be like nothing but an idea; a colour or figui'e 
can be like nothing but another colour or figure. 
I appeal to any one whether it be sense to 
assert that a colour is like something which is 
invisible ; hard or soft, like something which is 
intangible.'' 

What, then, is the word [e, g. rainbow) to us ? 
In itself it is worthless, a mere hieroglyphic, 
which cannot even teach us one iota about the 

* *' There still remains the question, 'Do things as thev are 
resemble things as they are conceived bv us ?' — a question TrhicL. 
we cannot answer either in the affirmative or in the negative ; for 
the denial, as much as the assertion, implies a comparison of the 
two," (which is impossible, if they are absolutely unknown). 
Mansell's Metaphysics, p. 354. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. l6l 

phenomenal world. We are very far from agree- 
ing with the '' divers philosophers " mentioned 
by Sir Hugh Evans in the Merry Wives ^ of 
Windsor, who '' hold that the lips is parcel of the 
mind." We still believe that objects do exist in 
the external world, even although it be absurd to 
say that they resemble our *' ideas " of them. 
Although to us they can only exist as '' ideas," 
and not as objects, we do not therefore deny that 
they have a real independent existence of their 
own. And precisely in the same way, whatever 
may be the derivation of the word truth, and 
however much our conceptions of that word must 
be modified by the laws of thought, we yet believe, 
as firmly as we believe anything, that truth has 
an independent, eternal, immutable existence ; 
that it is infinitely more than a mere ^'flatus 
vocis;'' that its indestructible idea, its original, 
its antetype, exists in the Divine f mind, and 
that if man and the works of man were to sink 
for ever into annihilation in the flames of a 
fiery surge, truth and wisdom would still exist, 
even as they existed when God prepared the 

* Act I. sc. iv. 

+ This was the ground taken both by Plato and Aristotle in 
refuting the Sophists. See Thecetet. p. 176. Arist. Ffh. Nic. v. 7. 
Aristoph. xVu6. 902 (quoted by Mr. Mansell, Metaphysics, p. 3S7). 



162 AN ESSAY ON 

heavens, "from the* beginning, or ever the earth 
was." 

There is then no reason to complain of the 
materialism of language, or to be afraid of the 
conclusions which nominalists like Home Tooke 
and his Dutch predecessor would willingly draw 
from the origin of words. No system of mate- 
rialism will account for grammar, that form of 
language which is due to the pure reason. Xo 
treatise on the history of words will be able to 
point to any external source as sufficient to 
account for the relation t of words among them- 
selves. No language is a mere collection of 
words; and Locke in all that he has written 
about ivords has offered no proof that any system 
of syntax is ultimately due to sensible ideas. 
His followers have attempted this, but they have 
failed. An eminent modern scholar has observed 
that a '* careful I dissection of the whole body of 
inflected speech will make it plain, that while 
words are merely outward symbols, designating 
certain notions of the mind, those notions do not 

* See Proverbs, ch. viii. 22^ Jewish pMlosopliy reaches its most 
passionate and eloquent strains in the expansion and inculcation of 
this belief. Ecclus. passim. 

t See Victor Cousin, Cours de VHist. de Phil Mor. iii. 
p. 214 seqq. 

X Dr. Donaldson, uli sup. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. i63 

stand related in all cases, just as the words or 
inflections widcli express them, and that we 
cannot by means of mere words convert into 
physical truth all that is logically and meta- 
physically true." 

Language is not what it has been called, ^' la 
pensee* devenue matiere.'' The very expression 
involyes a contradiction. Words can be nothing 
but symbols, and, at the best, very imperfect 
ones. To make the symbol in any way a mea- 
sure of the thought, is to bring down the infinite 
to the measure of the finite. Our words mean 
far more than they express, they shadow forth 
far more than it is in theii' power to define. 
When two men converse their words are but an 
instrument; the speaker is descending fromt 
thoughts to words, the listener rising from words 
to thoughts. Onomatopceia and metaphor are 
sufficient to provide us with the material part of 
language, the articulate sounds; but to translate 
those sounds into signs or words is the eff'ort of 
a faculty which transcends the sense. On the 
one hand we have a spiritual perception,^ the 
thought ; on the other hand a material accident, 
the combination of articulate utterances ; — but 

* Vinet, p. 3:^9. 
+ See Harris, Hermes^ iii. 4. t Charma; p. 64. 

31 2 



164 AN ESSAY ON 

what iDower can bridge the abysm between the 
two ? The reason, and the reason only. With- 
out reason, the use of metaphor would be 
impossible, and the result of imitation would 
be a collection of sounds as meaningless as 
the screams of a parrot or the chatterings of 
an ape. 

Surely these considerations are sufficient to 
show that there is no danger to true philosophy 
in the inferences to which language leads us. 
But, indeed, the whole of nominalism rests on a 
vast petitio ])rinciini. Because our primitive 
vocabulary is deduced solely from corporeal or 
sensible images, it is assumed, iier saltuvi, that 
our intellect only admits of conceptions directly 
derived from the agency of the senses, and that 
therefore thought is nothing but sensation. But 
the consciousness of the metaphor has vanished 
for ages from language, and when we use such a 
word as ^' spirit," we do not even remember that 
our word means in itself no more than " a whisper 
of the wind." Our primitive conceptions ad- 
mitted only of expression by means of a material 
analogy : — this is the sole ground of nominalism, 
and it will not bear the enormous structure of 
inferences built upon it; 1st, that our conceptions 
were themselves originally material; and, Sndly, 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUxiGE, 165 

that they are and must be so still, because we 
are incapable of any others. 

Finally, there are in every language ^' a vast 
number of words which may be explained by the 
idea, although the idea cannot be discovered by 
the word, as is the case with whatever belongs 
to the mystery of the mind." Such words are 
sacrifice, sacrament, mystery, eternity. The 
conclusion to which they lead us is a plain one, 
and it is one which will render us fearless of the 
arguments which the sensational philosophy has 
so long paraded with triumph as the main sup- 
port of its unbeliefs. It is that '' Words are at 
most intellectual symbols, and symbols are, at 
the best, w^ords. Neither the words of language, 
nor the symbols of religion, are the basis and 
reality of thought or of worship; they have no 
reality hut in reason and conscience^ and are of 
no use but in so far as they express this reality, 
and are so* understood and applied.'* 

* Bunsen's Outlines, ii. 146. The whole chapter is well worthy 
of attentive study, for the profound and noble thoughts which it 
contains. 



166 AN ESSAY ON 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE LAVv'S OF PROGRESS IX LANGUAGE. 

The history of almost every language points 
to the action of certain general laws of progress, 
which laws are psychological as well as linguistic, 
i.e. they correspond and are parallel to the 
growth and progress of the human mind. They 
may be briefly summed up by saying that lan- 
guages advance from exuberance to moderation, 
from complexity and confusion to grammatical 
regularity, and from synthesis to analysis. The 
explanation and illustration of these laws will 
occupy the present chapter. 

1st. Languages advance from exuherance to 
moderation, hy eliminating superfluities. 

The earliest languages are marked by exube- 
rance,^ indetermination, extreme variety, uncon- 
trolled liberty. They are melodious, but prolix 
and measureless. Words were invented inde- 
pendently, spontaneously, as they were required 
by the tribe or the individual, with little or no 
* Renan, p. 108. Grimm, 37. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. l67 

reference to already existing forms. The absence 
of literature, the want of political unity, the 
habits of a nomadic life, tended to create an 
immense multitude of terms and idioms. Among 
semi-barbarous and wandering communities the 
peculiarities which we call dialects existed simul- 
taneously and side by side. 

The Caucasus and Abyssinia present us a 
number of distinct languages in a narrow district- 
The number and variety of the Atnerican dialects 
is almost as great as that of the several tribes ; 
and in Oceania it has been asserted that nearly 
every island or group of islands possesses a 
speech which barely offers any affinity with that 
of the neighbouring groups. 

Unity of speech is the result of civilisation, 
and it is preceded by a diversity of forms which 
subsequently become the characteristics of par- 
ticular localities. The steps towards unity are 
three ; first, we have the confused, simultaneous 
existence of dialectic varieties ; then the isolated 
and independent existence of dialects ; and, 
finally, the fusion of these varieties in a more * 
extended unity. Thus the earliest Hebrew 
records contain traces of idioms which were sub- 
sequently the peculiar property of Aramaic, and 

* Kenan, p. IS 5. 



168 AN ESSAY ON 

we find in the Homeric poems a thousand 
variations of form and structure which were 
afterwards exclusively ^olic, or Attic, or Doric. 
The explanation of this fact is to be found in the 
consideration that these forms were in Homer's 
time the common property of the old Ionic 
tongue, and it was not till after ages that they 
became appropriated and localised. The suppo- 
sition that the rhapsodists employed a judicious 
selection of idioms, and made a mosaic out of 
distinct dialects, has long ago been abandoned 
as impossible and absurd. 

The process of eliminating superfluities is 
found in every language. Redundancy seems to 
have been necessary to an early stage of thought, 
for we find it not only in words but in expres- 
sions. The whole of Hebrew poetry depends 
on a repetition and enforcement of the same 
fundamental thought, so as to gain emphasis and 
variety. In children we find a tendency to repeat 
the same thing twice, once affirmatively and once 
negatively, as though the double assertion gave 
them an additional security. " It is not you, 
but I ;" "This letter is not A, but B ;" are turns 
of expression well known to those who have 
observed the language of the nursery. It is 
surprising to find the same unnecessary tautology 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 169 

existing very widely in the most advanced litera- 
tijres. '' We have seen with our eyes and heard 
with our ears," is a superfluity which has many 
types in the sacred writers ; " They were in great 
numbers, not in small," is the translation of a 
line in the OEdipus Tyrannus, and we find even 
a poet of our own times writing — 

There saw he where some careless hand 
O'er a dead * corpse had heaped the sand. 

There is no doubt that such tautologies are often 
so far from being barren, that they give force 
and precision to the conception which they 
convey; but the mischief of them is that they 
' give rise to a thousand errors of reasoning, and 
t to many minds have the effect of an argument. 



or, 



The Spanish fleet you cannot see, because 
It is not yet in sight, 

Et respondeo 
Quia sit in eo 

Vis quse faciat homines dormire. 

might be used as the satirical motto of many a 
treatise both in science and metaphysics.t 

* Of. 2 Kings, xix. 35. Such expressions as **a bullock that 
hath horns and hoofs" belong not so much to this tendency to 
avoid all possibility of mistake, as to the desire for something 
graphic — the irph o/xfidTcop iroieTu, 

f **L' opium endormit parce qu'il a une vertu soporifique." 



170 AN ESSAY ON 

There are two processes by which nations get 
rid of words which are mere synonyms of other 
words, and are therefore bmxlensome. The one 
is to drop altogether the superfluous word, or 
only retain some one form or application of it ; 
the other is to desynonjmiise words by using 
them each with one special shade of signification. 
Thus, when the Greek language obtained the 
word xP^^o^ ^o mean '' gold," it dropped alto- 
gether the word avpov, which at one time it must 
have possessed^ as is clear from a comparison of 
the word 6i](Tavpos with the Latin aurum. '^Yh: 
are called anomalous declensions and conjugations 
are explicable in the same manner, since ancient 
idioms are always richer than those which have 
undergone the revision of grammarians. It is, 
in fact, one of the duties of grammarians to make 
a choice among the riches of popular language, 
and to eliminate all w^ords that are unnecessary.' 
Thus a boy would be naturally puzzled by beings 
told that (p^pco, otcrco, TjveyKa are parts of the same 
verb, but it will be easy for him to understand 
and remember that these words are, in fact, the 

e. g. "When the essence of gold and its sulistantial form -was said to 
consist in its aureify, the attempt at pMlosophic explanation was 
no whit superior to those quoted in the text. The word ^ ' aureitv" ' 
was merely an effort of abstraction, but it was supposed to answer 
all questions and solve all doubts. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 171 

debris of three entirely se^^arate conjugations, 
l^arts of which only have been retained, while 
■ the remaining forms have been dropped because 
'i they were in no way needed. Merely capricious 
t varieties^ have all been solved into a single 
I verb. 

2ndly. Languages advance from confusion to 
regularity^ from incletermincition to grammar. 
What is true of the vocabulary of a language 
: is no less true of its grammar. Here also sim- 
' plicity is due to reflection, and is posterior to the 
rich complexity of a faculty spontaneously exer° 
cised. Scientific grammar is a subsequent inven- 
" tion; at their birth languages are lawless and 
i irregular. The reason why the oldest and least 
( grammatical languages appear to have the longest 
i grammars, is because the anomalies are all cata- 
logued as though they were so many rules, and 
what was once permissible because it then violated 
• no law of language is ranked as the recognised 
^ exception to a definite order. An Isaiah would 
I have been amazed at reading the innumerable 
! rules of language by which modern grammarians 
,i suppose him to have been governed ; and a 
Thucydides would have been hardly less as- 
tonished to see his *' syllogism of passion'' 
rigidly reduced to a syllogism of grammar. 



172 AX ESSAY ON 

At first, until usage had arisen, every body 
seems to have been at liberty to invent or adopt 
conjugations and declensions almost at his own 
caprice. '^ The more barbarous a language/' says 
Herder, ^' the greater is the number of its conju- 
gations." It has been a fatal mistake of philology ] 
to suppose that simplicity is anterior to com- 
plexity : simplicity is the triumph of science, not 
the spontaneous result of intelHgence. The 
Basque language, which has retained much of 
the primitive spirit, has eleven moods : the Caffir ;\ 
language has upwards of twenty. Agglutination ' 
or Polysynthetism* is the name which has been 
invented for the complex condition of early 
language, when words follow each other in a sort 
of idyllic and laissez-aller carelessness, and the 
whole sentence, or even the whole discourse, is 
conjugated or declined as though it were a single 
word, every subordinate clause being inserted in 
the main one by a species of Incapsulation. This 
is the case with the Astec, the languages of the 
Pacific, and many other languages. The Mongol 
declines an entii^e firman, and even in Sanskiit, 
flexions so far supersede syntax that the whole 

* First -Qsed "by ]\r. Duponceau in Ms EnglisL. translation of tlie 
German Grammar of Zeisberger. Ciiarma, p. 266, Schleicher 

called tliese languages ''Holopln-astic." 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 173 

'thought is in some sort dechnecl. In Mexican, 

I the Vsoxdi^ NoilazomahiuzteoinxcatatzinyYiiih. which 

they salute the priests, is easily decomposed into 

" Yenerable priest, whom I honour as my father ; " 

and in Turkishjt the single word Sev-isli-diT'il' 

\me-mek means ^' not to be brought to love one 

another." Yet even these are entirely surpassed 

by some of the dialects of North America. In the 

^ I Iroquois, for instance, one word of twenty-one 

I letters expresses this sentence of eighteen words : 

" I give some money to those who have arrived, 

in order to buy them more clothes with it." This 

one word is an agglomeration of simple words 

and roots in a violent state of fusion and 

apocope. 

3rdlj'. Analogous in great measure to the law 
which we have been mentioning (or perhaps we 
may say a further development of the same law), 
is the progress of language from Synthesis to 
Analysis, 

We have seen that many ancient languages are 



* Eum'boldt, quoted by Charma, p. 222. 

t Max Miiller, p, 113. Compare Moliere, Le Bourgeois Gentil- 
Jiomme, iv. 4. ** Mons. Jourdain : Tant de choses en deux mots 1 — 
Gov. : Oui, la langue turqne est comme cela, elle dit beaucoup en 
pen de paroles." 

X Ampere, Rev. des Deux Mondes, Fevrier, 1853, p. 572. 



174 AN ESSAY ON 

polysynthetic or* holophrastic, i.^.,that thej^ pro- 
duce the entire thought or sentence under the 
form of one complex and rich unity, and subordi- 
nate every word and phrase to the domination of 
the entire clause. Even in early Greek and 
Latin we may find traces of this '^ holophrasis '* 
in the separation of two parts of the same word 
which was permissible by what is called tmesis. 
as for instance in such expressions as Kara baKpv 
yiovcray and even Kara iriova ixripi^ eK?;a. In Latin the , 
same licence is far more rare, although we find 
it in the lines, " Inque cruentatiis,'' &c., and it 
was retained in one or two compounds, as " Quo te 
cumque ferent." In both languages these extreme 
cases early disappeared, and the startling audacity 
of Ennius in the famous 

Cere comminuit brum, 

for '^ comminuit cerebrum," would probably have 
made Virgil stare and gasp, as much ast the .. 
modern 

Jo qui terras de coelo despicis hannes. 

But although nothing is left in the Indo- 
European languages but the faint traces of that 
sylleptical tendency which seems to have marked 

* Also called ^^ incorporant.''^ + Charma. p. 223. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 175 

the earliest stage of language, they offer the most 
splendid examples of a perfect synthesis. By a 
facile power of composition, and by attaching to 
the verb and noun a variety of terminations 
capable of distinguishing the nicest modifications 
of meaning, they have produced an instrument of 
[thought almost unrivalled in accuracy and beauty. 

In Greek and Latin one word w^as enough 
|to express alike the subject, copula, and predi- 
cate ; in English^ two are always requisite, and 
generally three. The single word rvTrro) requires 
'the three w^ords — '' I am striking " — to render it; 
to translate amahor in English or in German we 
require four words, "I shall be loved — Ich werde 
'gelieht tverden;'' and the same is true of many 
other parts of the verb ; as kreTiixrui^Oa, ]jeriisses, 
''we had been honoured," ''you would have 
perished." 

At first sight this analysis may seem to be a 
defect, but, in point of fact, it is a development. 
It is a bad thing for the human mind to be 
subjected to the despotism of a rigid grammar, 
the tyranny of too perfect a form. As it is the 
danger of advancing civilisation and of too 
refined a societj^ to reduce men. to the deal level 
of uniformity, and subject every caprice of the 
individual to the domination of an unwritten 



176 AN ESSAY ON 

code, called tlie ''laws of society," so a language 
^ which crystallises every relation in a definite 
form tends to cramp and restrain the genius of 
those who use it. In the tragedies of ^^schylus 
and the odes of Pindar, marvellous as is the 
powder which crams every rigid phrase with the 
fire of a hidden meaning, we yet feel that the , 
form is cracking under the spirit, or at least 
there is a tension injurious to the general effect. 
A language which gets rid of its earlier inflec- 
tions — English, for instance, as compared with 
Anglo-Saxon — loses far less than might have 
been supposed. 

The progress of language from synthesis to 
analysis is that of the human intelligence. Later 
generations find the language of their ancestors 
too learned for their own use. For the unity, 
spontaneous but often obscure, of the primitive 
tongues, they substitute an idiom clearer and 
more explicit by giving a separate existence to 
every subject in the sentence. They break up 
the conglomerated jewels of old speech to reset 
them in an order less dazzling but more distinct. 
They sacrifice the magnificence of mystery to the 
light of distinct comprehension. Instead of one 
sentence, out of whose tangled intricacies flashed, 
all the more brightly from contrast, the rays of 



THE OKIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 1/7 

enthusiasm and genius, they attain to a logical 
accuracy which gives to each idea and each rela- 
tion its isolated expression. AYhat they lose in 
euphony, force, and poetic concision, they gain 
in the power of marking the nicest shades of 
thought; what they lose in* elasticity they 
; gain in strength. If synthetic and agglutina- 
tive languages are the best instruments of imagi- 
nation, analysis better serves the purposes of 
reflection. Splendid efflorescence is followed by 
ripe fruit. 

It is thus t that Sanskrit, with its eight cases, 
six moods, and numerous inflections, capable of 
expressing a crowd of secondary ideas, decom- 
poses first into the Pali (?), Prakrit, and Kawi, 
dialects less rich and learned, but more precise, 
which substitute auxiliaries and prepositions for 
case and tense ; and even these latter, too 
complex for ordinary use, are gradually displaced 
I by the more vulgar dialects of Hindostan, — the 
i Hindoo, the Mahrattah, and the Bengali. 
Ij In the same way the Zend, Pehlvi, and Pars-i, 
'lare replaced by the modern Persian. The Zend, 

* Grimm, ss. 37 — 47. 

f Renan, p. 160 seqq. It is doubtful whetlier tte Pali ^as 
anything more than an artificial language. If so, however, it is 
|an nnique phenomenon, and it must not be forgotten that a similar 
opinion was once entertained respecting the Sanskrit and Zend. 



178 AN ESSAY ON 

with its long and complicated words, its want of 
prepositions, and its method of supplj^ing the 
want by means of cases, represents a language 
eminently synthetic. Modern Persian, on the 
contrary, is poorer in flexions than almost any 
language which exists ; it may be said^ without 
exaggeration, that its whole grammar might be 
compressed into a few pages. Modern Greek is 
the analysis or decomposition of ancient Greek 
during a long period of barbarism. The Romance 
languages are Latin submitted to the same 
process ; Italian, Spanish, French, and AYalla- 
chiaU; are merely Latin mutilated, deprived of its 
flexions, reduced to shortened forms, and supply- 
ing by numerous monosyllables the learned 
organisation of the ancient idioms. '' The fact 
then that the people in Italy, in France, in Spain, 
in Greece, on the banks of the Danube and of the 
Ganges^ have been reduced to the necessity of 
treating their ancient languages in precisely the 
same manner to accommodate them to their 
wants ; and the fact that two languages, so dis- 
tant in time and space as the Pali and the 
Italian for instance, occupy positions exactly 
identical in relation to their mother-tongues, 
aflords the best proof that there is in the pro- 
gress of languages a necessary law, and that 



THE ORIGIN OF LAXGUA&E. l79 

there is an irresistible tendency which, leads idioms 
to despoil themselves of an apparel too learned to 
clothe a form more simple, more popular, and 
more convenient." * 

In the Semitic languages we find the progress 

towards analysis from various t causes less decided, 

but no less ascertainable. Ancient Hebrew is 

remarkable for its agglutination. '^ Like a child," 

says Herder, " it seeks to say all at once." It 

uses one word where we require five or six. But 

as we approach the period of the captivity we find 

a propensity to replace grammatical mechanisms 

by periphrasis, a propensity still more marked in 

modern or Eabbinical Hebrew. The later dialects 

— Chaldean, Samaritan, Syriac — are longer, 

clearer, more analytic. These, in their turn, are 

absorbed into Arabic, which pushes still farther 

1 the analysis of grammatical 'relations. But the 

; delicate and varied flexions of Arabic are still too 

1; difficult for the rude soldiers of the early Khalifs ; 

solecisms multiply, grammatical forms are aban- 

I doned, and for the Arabic of the schools we get the 

j vulgar Arabic, which is simpler and less elegant, 

but in some respects more accurate and distinct. 

I * Precisely the same change takes place in the gro^i:h of English 
' t j from Saxon, and Danish from Icelandic. 
: t Hist, des Langues Se?n. v. 1, 2, and 3. 

N 2 



180 AN ESSAY ON 

Even the languages of central and eastern 
Asia are not entirely wanting in analogous phe- 
nomena. But the facts already adduced are amply 
sufficient to prove that, in the history of 
languages, Synthesis is primitive, and Analysis, 
far from being the natural process of the intelli- 
gence, is only the slow result of its development. 
And if it be a natural development it must, on 
the whole, be considered an advance. 

" An instance,"* observes Grimm, '^ unique but 
decisive, is alone sufficient to replace all the proofs 
and arguments which I have accumulated in my 
reasoning on this subject. Among modern 
languages there is not one which has gained more 
force and solidity than the English by neglecting 
or breaking the ancient rules of sound, and 
suffering almost all flexions to drop. The abund- 
ance of medial sounds, the pronunciation of 
which may be learnt but cannot be taught, gives 
to this language a power of expression, such as 
perhaps no human language has ever attained. 
Its highly spiritual genius and marvellously 
happy development are due to the astonishing 
union of the two most noble languages in modern 

* Uher den Urspr. d. Sprache, p. 50. Anotlier weiglity testi- 
mony to the splendour of the English language may be found in 
Adelung's Mithridates. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 181 

Europe, German and Eomance. We know the 
part which each of these elements plays in the 
I English language ; one of them is almost entirely 
IJ devoted to the representation of sensible ideas, 
the other to the expression of intellectual rela- 
tions. Yes, the English language, which has 
produced and nourished with its milk the greatest 
of modern poets, the only one who can be com- 
pared to the classical poets of antiquity (who 
does not see that I am speaking of Shakspeare ?), 
may of good right be called an universal 
language, and seems destined, like the English 
people itself, to extend its empire farther and 
farther in all quarters of the globe." 

To the laws which we have been considering, 
many philologists would be inclined to add a 
fourth — viz., the progress to polysyllahism from 
a state originally monosyllabic. Many arguments 
may undoubtedly be adduced, which give a prima 
facie probability to this supposition.^^ We will 
proceed briefly to state them. 

It is argued, firstly, that we should have 
expected a priori a predominance of monosyllabic 
roots, because it is unlikely that a single powerful 
impression w^ould have expressed itself by more 

■^ See Benloew, p. 15 sqq. Humboldt, Uher die Verschiedenheit 
des menschlichen Sprachhaues, ad finem. 



182 AN ESSAY ON 

than one sound. Since one sound would have 
been sufficient, we should not be inclined to look 
for any superfluity. Impression would provoke 
expression with the same rapidity that the flash 
of lightning is kindled by the shock of two 
electric clouds. It must be remembered that the 
young senses of the human race were unac- 
customed to compound articulations, and neither 
their ears nor their tongues would have led them 
to signify by two sounds or two syllables an im- 
pression essentially single. 

Secondly, it is said that existing facts prove 
the likelihood of this conclusion. Thus, to this 
day, some nations are unable to pronounce com- 
j)ound consonants by one emission of the voice. 
Such is the case with the Mantschou, and the 
Chinese can only utter the word Christus by 
changing it according to the custom of his lan- 
guage into ki'li'SU-tiL-su,^^ The Chinese then may 
be considered as a language petrified in its first 
stage of flexionless and ungrammatical monosyl- 
labism. Thus, in order to express the plural, 
they are obliged to add the words, '* another " 
and ''much," or to repeat the noun twice, express- 
ing " us " by " me another," and trees by '' tree,t 

■^ The Chinese 'J' is pronounced like 4'.' 

f Many readers may recall the story of the late Mr. Albert 



THE OEIGIX OF LANGUAGE. 183 

tree." The prayer, " Our Father wliicli art in 
heayen," assumes in Chinese^' the form ^* Being 
heaven me another (^our) Father who," a style 
not unlike the natural language of very young 
children. 

Thirdly, it is asserted that all existing 
languages are capable of being deduced from 
monosyllabic roots ; that even the triliteral t 
Semitic languages afford abundant evidence of 
the fact that the three consonants are only the 
result of a growth, since one of the consonants is 
often weak and unnecessary, and many of the 
words expressing simple!: ideas have only one 
syllable. 

Whatever weight may attach to these consi- 
derations, they do not appear to be convincing. 
The attempt of Fiirst and Delitzch to get over 
the fact of Semitic triliteralism is not com- 
pletel}^ successful, and no evidence has ever been 

Smitli abont the Bishop being described in tLe mixed jargon of 
Hong Kong as the '' A-one-heayen-business-man." 

* Adelung, 3Iithridates, i. p. 412. Some deny the monosyllabic 
character of Chinese. (Prof. Key, Art. Language, Engl. Cycl.) 

t It should be observed that triliteralism is not necessarily 
incompatible with monosyllabism. See Hist, des Langues Semi- 
tiques, p. 94, 2nde ed. 

X As l^J father, ?2h? mother, rr^"^ brother, in mountain, T hand, 
DV day, &c. 



184 AX ESSAY ON 

adduced to sliow the causes which could have 
influenced a language to abandon an essentially 
monosyllabic character, or the time when so 
immense a change could have taken place. 

Chinese, as we know, has been monosyllabic 
rom the earliest period, and continues so to 
h is day ; and even Thibetian and Burmese,* 
though they have, under the influence of other 
languages, made great efi'orts to attain a grammar, 
have yet retained the ineffaceable impress of their 
original condition. "We therefore reject this 
fourth law, as one which, even if possible, is by 
no means proven. Further discussion of it will, 
indirectly, be involved in the following chapter. 
At best, it can only be regarded as an artificial 
hypothesis, occasionally convenient for the pur- 
poses of the grammarian, but not corresponding 
to any real condition of the languages as once 
spoken. 

* Kenan, p. 168. I mnst content myself here with a general 
reference to M. Renan, to whose works I have been very greatly 
indebted thronghout the chapter, and indeed, as I have repeatedly 
observed, throughout the book. 



THE OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 185 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE FAMILIES OF LANGUAGES. 

** Fades non omnibus una, 
Nee diversa tamen, quales decet esse sororum." — Yirg. 

It lias been considered bj^ many that language 
has passedt through four^ stages. 1. A period in 
which words succeed each other in the natural 
order of the thought, with nothing except this 
order to express their mutual relation, and with 
few or no inflections, as in Chinese. 2. A period 
of agglutination in which the smaller words to 
express relation have assumed an inflectional 
form, but without losing the trace of their origin- 
ally distinct existence, as in Mongol and the 
majority of existing languages. 3. A period of 
amalgamation, in which the language becomes 
purely inflectional, as in Latin and Greek. 4. A 
period of analysis, in which inflections fall off 

■^ Pott's formula for the morpliological classification of languages 
was tliat they are *' isolating, " ** agglutinative, " and ''inflec- 
tional." Professor Miiller and Baron Bunsen have shown that 
these divisions nearly correspond with three stages of political 
development — "Family," "Komad," and "State." 



186 AN ESSAY ON 

and get displaced by separate words, auxiliaries, 
prej)ositions, &c., as in English* 

That languages exist in each of these condi- 
tions is undeniable, but that they represent an his- 
torical sequence is an inference which may well 
be disputed. The common a priori notion that 
complexity is a proof of development is, as we 
have already seen, entirely erroneous ; since the 
languages of American savages and central 
Africans are surprising in their grammatical rich- 
ness, and the bald monosyllabic Chinese is yet 
an adequate organ for a developed civilisation. 
The logical order is not the same as the histo- 
rical. It is the opinion of M. Eenan that each 
branch of languages was, from the first, per- 
vaded by one dominant idea, which was due to 
the genius of the race by which it was produced, 
and that, from this idea, all further changes 
directly derive their origin. The entire language 
existed implicitly in its primitive stage, just as a 
bud contains entire every essential part of the full- 
grown flower. Languages once monosyllabic, for 
instance, have, he maintains, always continued 
so, and although some languages of the trans- 
Gangetic peninsula have effected a real progress 
in the direction of grammatical polysyllabism, 

* Encyd, Brit. Art. Language, (Dr. Latham.) 



THE OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 187 

^j'et an abj^ss still separates them from the 
languages which are truly grammatical, — an 
(abyss which, he thinks, never has been and 
never can be bridged over. 

., But we shall be better able to enter on these 
rmost important considerations when we have 
jglanced at the certain results resj)ecting the 
j! classification of languages which have been at 
'jpresent established by modern philology. 
(j Two families of languages, embracing a large 
J and widely- separated number of the spoken 
languages of the globe, have now been dis- 
tinctly recognised and clearly defined. These 
are the Indo-European, and the Semitic. The 
.remaining languages, which are non-Semitic and 
. non-Arian, have been recently included under 
the general name Turanian, and the high au- 
jjthority of Baron Bunsen and Prof. Max Mtiller 
has secured for this name a wide acceptation. 
We shall see hereafter that the semblance of 
unity in these languages, which is assumed by 
the adoption of this name, has been disputed 
by some of the ablest philologists, and at any 
rate the languages of the so-called Tui^anian 
family have far less real claim to the ties of 
mutual relationship than the members of the 
Semitic and Indo-European families. 



183 AX ESSAY ON 

I. Of tliese families, the noblest and most 
widely- spread is the Indo-Euroi^ean, or as it is 
now more generally called, the Arian family. 
Neither of these names is entii^ely* unobjection- 
able, though either of them is preferable to the . 
term Indo-Germanic, which is now abandoned as i 
wholly inaccurate. The name Indo-European 
marks the geographical extent of these languages, i 
but it is inconvenient, and not quite wide enough, 
The name Arian was given them because the ■. 
ancestors of the ]3eople who spoke them are 
supposed to have called themselves ^' Arya," t , 
or nobly-born. This name is now generally 
adopted^ and M. Pictet, one of the i)rofoundest of 
modern comparative philologists, has called his • 
most recent work, " Les Origines Indo-Europeen- 
nes ou les Arvas Primitifs." But althouo'h this 
term Arya is of frequent occurrence in the later 
Sanskrit literature, and was also familiar to the 
Persians, the traces of it among the other 

* On Ta designee par les noms de famille Indo-G-ermaniqiie ou 
Indo-Europeenne, lesqnels ne sont ni logiques ni Jiarmonieux, car 
ils n'expriment qu'imparfaitement le sens qui leur est attribue, 
et leur longueur demesuree en rend I'emploi fort pen commode. " 
— Pictet's Origines Indo-Eur. p. 28. They have, however, the 
advantage of explaining themselves. 

f Burnouf, Comment aire sur le Yacua, p. xciii. See also 
Bunsen's Outlines, i. 281. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. ISQ 

^[branches of the race are few and dubious ; tliey 

fare but very ^' faint ^^ echoes," if echoes at all, ''of 

tja name which once sounded through the valleys 

of the Himalaya." Still it is not likely that this 

name will now be superseded, as East's term 

Japhetic involves an unwarrantable assumption ; 

I and the name Pataric (derived from Patar, 

the Sanskrit ''pitar/' a father), which has 

j been recently suggested,! is not likely to gain 

ground. 

The Arian family comprises eight divisions, 
the Hindu, the Persian, Greek, Latin, Lithua- 
nian, Sclavonic, Teutonic, and Celtic ; of these 
it is uncertain whether the Celtic or the Sanskrit 
represents the oldest phase, but it is known that 
all of them are the daughters of a primeval form 
of language which has now ceased to exist, but 
which was spoken by a yet-undivided race at a 
period when Sanskrit and Greek had, as yet, only 

* These traces are most ably pointed out in the EdiriburgJi 
Review for October, 1851, quoted in an interesting note by Prof. 
Max jMiiller, Survey of Languages, p. 28, 2nd ed. See, too, Pictet, 
pp. 27 — 34, who connects the root ar with the words Erin, Elam, 
Ariovistus, Arminius, oriri, &c. If this be a right derivation of 
Erin, the fact is important, as showing that some memory of the 
old name was preserved in the extreme VTest as well as in the 
East. 

f By a writer in the Saturday Revieiu for Xov. 19, 1559. 



190 AN ESSAY ON 

an implicit existence. '' It is," says M. Eenan/ 
" the noblest conquest of comparative philology ^ 
to have enabled us to cast a bold glance over 
this primitive Arian period, when the whole 
germ of the world's civilisation was concentrated 
in one straight raJ^ Just as the Eomance dialects • 
are all derived from a language which was once 
spoken by a small tribe on the banks of the ' 
Tiber; so the Indo-European languages presup- 
pose a language spoken in a very narrow district. 
What motive, for instance, could have induced all 
Indo-European nations to derive the name of 
* father' from the root * pa ' and the suffix 'tri' 
or 'tar,' if this word, in its complete shape, had 
not formed part of the vocabularj^ of the primi- 
tive Arians ? What motive, above all, could 
have induced them, after their departure, to 
derive the name of ' daughter' from a notion so 
special as that of milking \ (Sanskrit duhitri, 
Ovydrvip, dochter, &c.), if this word had not 
deduced the reason for its form in the man- 
ners of an ancient pastoral family ? " It is 
from considerations such as these that we 

* p. 49. 

'jr For a graphic sketch of early Arian life as deduced from the 
records of language, see Weber's Indische SJcizzen, pp. 9, 10 ; 
Pictet's Origines Indo-Europeennes ; Miiller's Ess, on Comjp. 
Mytlwlogy. 



THE OEIGIX OF LANGUAGE. 191 

prove the great fact of the Indo-European 
unity, — the New World now thrown open to 
modern scholarship. '' That the Sanskrit, the 
ancient language of India, the very* existence 
of which was unknown to the Greeks and 
Romans before Alexander, and the sound of 
which had never reached a European ear till 
[ the close of the last century, that this lan- 
'] guage should be a scion of the same stem, 
' whose branches overshadow the civilised world 
of Europe, no one would have ventured to affirm 
before the rise of comparative philology. It was 
the generally received opinion that if Greek, 
Latin, and German came from the east, they 
must be derived from the Hebrew, — an opinion 
for which, at the present day, not a single advo- 
cate could be found,+ while formerly to disbelieve 
it would have been tantamount to heresy. Xo 
authority could have been strong enough to 
persuade the Grecian army that their gods and 
their hero-ancestors were the same as those of 
Eno; Porus. or to convince the Enoiish soldier 
: that the same blood was running in his veins, as 
in the veins of the dark Bengalese. And yet 
there is not an Enghsh jury now-a-days, which, 

* Miiller, p. 2S sqq. 

t Except some popular modem diyines. 



192 AN ESSAY ON 

after examining the hoary documents of language, 
would reject the claims of a common descent 
and a legitimate relationship between Hindu, 
Greek, and Teuton. Many words still live in 
India and in England that witnessed the first 
separation of the northern and southern Arians, 
and these are witnesses not to be shaken by any 
cross-examination. Though the historian may 
shake hi^ head, though the physiologist may 
doubt, and the poet scorn the idea, all must 
yield before the facts furnished by language. 
There was a time when the ancestors of the 
Celts, the Germans, the Danes, the Greeks, the 
Italians, the Persians, and Hindus, were living 
beneath the same roof, separate from the 
ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races." 

Comparative philology enables us to form a 
very probable conjecture respecting the cradle of 
the Arian race, and even to draw in outline a 
picture of their primitive civilisation. "We know 
that this race was not indigenous in India. M. 
Lassen has proved that it entered India from * the 
north as an aristocratic and conquering nation, 

* Lassen, Indisclie Alterthumskunde, Kenan, 219 seqq. 
Klaprotli builds an argument for tlie Northern origin of the 
Arians on the word *' birch," which bears an analogous name 
' * not only in the German and Slavonic tongues, but also in the 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 193 

I distinguished by its fair complexion from the 
[I swarthier aborigines ; and a crowd of linguistic 

inferences converge into a proof that it sprang 
i from the mountain-cradle of Imaus, from which 
jl neighbourhood it seems likely that the Shemites 

also derived their origin. 

The traditions of the Arians, as well as the facts 
j of their language, point to Bactriana, as the region 
j in which they first appeared ; central in position, 
f temperate in climate, rich in the metals always 
I found in mountainous countries, resembling 
! Europe in its flora and fauna, and equally 

removed from tropical luxuriance and northern 

Sanskrit — Vhurjja .... It seems birch, was the only tree the 
invaders recognised, and could name, on the south side of the 
Himalaya ; all others being new to them. The inference may be 
right or wrong — it is, at all events, ingenious." Garnett's Essays^ 

ii p.33. See Klaproth, Nouv. J. Asiat. v. 112. Pictet, Orig. Ind, 
i. 217. The fact that the words for oyster are derived from the 
same root in the European languages (Gk. oarpeou, Ang.-Sax. 
ostra, Irish oisridh^ Cymr. (xstren, Russ. ilstersu, French huitre, 
Germ. Auster, &c.), but not in the Sanskrit or Indian branch of 

' the Arian family, — would seem to show that there was a great 
separation of Eastern and "Western Arians before the family had 
reached the shores of the Caspian. A similar fact is observed in 
the name for flax, (Gr. Xivou, Lat. linurn^ Goth, lein, Ang.-Sax. 

j I Zm, Cym. llin^ Russ. lenu, &c. ), and shows that the Western 

I Arians were the first of the family to desert pastoral for agricul- 
tural pursuits. Id. pp. 320, 516. Few studies are more interest- 
ing than the "linguistic palaeontology," which thus enables us to 

.'I revive the form of an extinct language and civilisation. 

/ ' 



194 AN ESSAY ON 

poverty, no other country could be found more 
perfectly suited for the peaceable development of 
the noble family which was destined to mould the 
character of the world. 

The Arians did not appear till late in the 
world's history. ' The Achsemenid empire, which 
is the first great conquering Arian empire, is 
contemporary with a period when the descend- 
ants of Ham had already lost all excellence, and 
when China had long aiTived at that degree of 
administrative absorption of which the Tcheou-li 
affords an astonishing picture, and which has so 
near a resemblance to absolute decrepitude. 
Brilliant civilisations, powerful kings, organised 
empires, already existed in the world at a 
period when our ancestors were still a race of 
poor and ignorant peasants. And yet it was 
these austere patriarchs who, in the midst of 
their chaste and obedient families, thanks to 
their j^ride, their cultivation of right, and theii' 
noble self-respect, laid the foundation of the 
future. Their thoughts, their terms, were des- 
tined to become the law of the moral and intel< 
lectual world. They created those eternal words, 
which, with manj" changing shades of meaning, 
were destined to become 'honour/* 'virtue/ 
' duty.' 

* Renan, p. 235. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 195 

In speaking thus of the apparition of a race 
or a language, we only mean the time at which 
man awoke to reflection and consciousness. 
The origin of language is not necessarily iden- 
tical (considered scientifically) with the origin 
of mankind. The circumstances and conditions 
under which man first appeared on the face of 
the world is a subject for the research of the 
'{ physiologist, rather than the philologist, and it is 
i more than doubtful whether the most earnest in- 
quiries will ever be able to draw aside the thick 
veil which hides the dawn of human life. In en- 
deavouring to derive from the facts of language 
some conjecture as to the nucleus around which it 
; grew, and the primitive condition of the races with 
I whose distinctive genius it is indelibly stamped, 
' we are not pretending to throw any light on the 
|i original appearance of the fathers of mankind. 

II. Second in importance, although earlier 
j in historical development, stands the great 
I SEMITIC family of languages. Formerly they 
i|i were called by the general name of oriental lan- 
guages, and Eichhorn was, we believe, the first to 
give them their present designation. The name is, 
however, defective, since many people w^ho spoke 
Semitic languages (as for instance the Phoeni- 
cians) were descended, according to Gen. x., from 
j 2 



196 AN ESSAY ON 

Ham, and several mentioned in that chapter as 
descendants of Shem (for instance, the Elamites), 
did not speak a Semitic language. But it is now 
generally agreed that the sense of this document 
is geographical, not ethnographical, and that the 
name of Shem is a general term to describe the 
central zone of the earth. Were we to name these 
languages, on the analogy of the word Indo- 
European, from their extreme terms, we must 
call them Syro-Arabian. Leibnitz suggested the 
name Arabic, but this would be to use an 
objectionable s3^necdoche, and, on the whole, the 
term Semitic involves no inconvenient conse- 
quences if it be considered as purely con- 
ventional.* 

The Semitic languages have been destined to 
exercise a stupendous influence over the religious 
thought of mankind. Almost unconscious of 
science and philosophy, this theocratic race has 
devoted itself to the expression of religious 
instincts and intuitions, — in one word, to the 
establishment of Monotheism. The three most 
widely spread and enduring forms of belief 
originated in the bosom of this family. They were 
essential!}^ the people of God, and to them belong, 
par excellence, the psalm, and the proverb, and 

* Histoire des Langues Sem. pp. 1, 2. 



THE OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 197 

the prophecy, — the words of the wise, and their 
dark sayings upon the harp. Clear but narrow in 
their conceptions, marked by their subjective 
character, and capable of understanding unity but 
not multiplicity ; they lacked alike the lofty 
spiritualism of India and Germany, the keen 
sense of perfect beauty which was the legacy of 
Greece to the new Latin nations, and the pro- 
found yet delicate sensibility which is the do- 
minant mark of the Celtic peoples. And yet 
neither India nor Greece alone could have taught 
the world the great lesson which was connected 
by the Semitic race with their most imperious 
instincts, that there is but one God, and that 
religion is something more than a relative 
conception. Destitute of that restless spirit of 
inquiry which has led the sister-race to explore 
every nook of the universe and every secret of 
the mind, the highest attainment of Semitic 
research is to declare that the increase of know- 
ledge is the increase of sorrow^ and that the 
praise and service of God is the sole end and aim 
of life. It was a great lesson which the world 
could ill have spared, and it more than atoned 
for the absence of research, of imagination, of 
art, of military organisation, of public spirit, of 
political life : it more than atones even for an 



198 AN ESSAY ON 

egotistic poetry and a defective conception of 
morality and duty. 

The Semitic languages partake of the charac- 
teristics of that race whose thoughts they 
embodied. They are simple and rigid, metallic 
rather than fluid ; physical and sensuous in their 
character, deficient in abstraction, and almost in- 
capable of metaphysical accuracy. The roots are 
triliteral in form and so few in number that their 
meanings are generally vague, being in fact a 
series of metaphorical applications of some sen- 
sible perception. They are deficient in style and 
in perspective ; they are, as Ewald observes, 
lyric and poetic, rather than oratorical and epic ; 
they are the best means of showing us the primi- 
tive tendencies of language ; they may be com- 
pared to the utterances of a fair and intelligent 
infancy retained in a manhood which has not 
fulfilled the brilliant promise of its early days. 

The Semitic family has three main branches 
— viz., the Aramaic, divided into two dialects, 
Syriac and Chaldee ; the Hebrew, with which is 
connected the Carthaginian and Phoenician, and 
the Arabic. Besides these the Egyptian, the 
Babylonian, and the Assyrian and the Berber 
dialects are now considered to have a Semitic 
character, such at least is the conclusion arrived 



THE OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 199 

at by those whose authority is of the highest 
importance — viz., Champollion and Bunsen in 
the case of Egyptian, M.M. Lassen and Eugene 
Bornon, Dr. Hincks and Sir H. EawUnson in 
the case of Assyrian, and Prof. F. Newman in the 
jl case of the Berber dialects.* It is admitted, how- 
ever, that the people speaking these languages 
I were the cognate rather than the agnate descend- 
I ants of Shem ; and it must not be overlooked, 
f that the conclusion which would rank these 
languages as indubitably Semitic is rejected by 
i philologists so celebrated as M.M. Pott, Ewald, 
Wenrich, and Eenan.f 

III. All languages which belong to neither of 
' these two great families have been classed toge- 
ther under the name of the Tueanian, Nomadic, 
or Allophylian family,! which "comprises all 

* Miiller's Survey, p. 23 seqq. 

i* Hist, des Langues SemitiqueSy pp. 70 — 90. 

+ The name was suggested "by Baron Bunsen in 1847. Outlines, 
i. 64. He even argues for the Turanian character of the Chinese ; 
' ' although it is certain that the same opposition exists between the 
two as there is between inorganic and organic life." Gfeneral laws, 
operative in the formation of all languages, ought not to be taken 
for indications of special afB.nity ; who would maintain the identity 
of quadrupeds and birds from the analogy of their respiratory 
and digestive systems ? In the formation of languages certain 
first principles were necessarily observed by all, and this of course 
leads to some general resemblances. 



200 AN ESSAY ON 

languages spoken in Asia or Europe, not in- 
cluded under the Arian and Semitic families, 
with the exception perhaps of the Chinese and 
its dialects." 

The chief labourers in the field of Turanian 
philology were Rask, Klaproth, Schott, and 
Castren; but even M. Mliller, one of the 
main authorities for the classification of the 
various branches of language which occupy 
this wide range (e.g., the Tungusic, jMongolic, 
Turkic, Samoiedic, and Finnic), candidly admits 
that the characteristic marks of union ascer- 
tained for this immense variety of languages, 
" are as yet very vague and general, if compared 
with the definite ties of relationship which 
severally unite the Semitic and the Arian." He 
argues, however, that this is exactly what we 
should have expected, d iMori, in the case of 
Nomadic languages spoken over an area so vast ; 
languages which have never been the instruments 
of political organisation, which have no history in 
the past and no destiny in the future, and which 
never had any literature to give fixity to their 
acknowledged unsettledness. Though the " Tura- 
nian " languages occupy by far the largest por- 
tion of the earth (viz., all but India, Arabia, 
Asia-Minor and Europe), there is not a single 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 201 

positive principle, except perhaps agglutination, 
^ which can be proved to pervade them all.* 

It is impossible here to examine the arguments 
on which the unity of this family has been con- 
^ sidered to be apj^roximately established, while it 
? is admitted that this unity does not admit of any 
proof so strong and decisive as in the case of the 
Indo-European and Semitic families. Those who 
seek the evidence will find it stated, at full length, 
and with great eloquence and abilit}'-, by Prof. Max 
Mtiller, in his '' Survey of Languages," and also in 
Baron Bunsen's '' Outlines." Suffice it here to say, 
that to many the vast gToup of Tartar o-Finnic 
languages still appear to be purely sporadic, and 
■ to have no common character except such as is 
involved in their being neither xA.rian nor Semitic, 
i,e,, in the purely negative trait of an absence of 
certain development. Under these circumstances, 
we think that for the present it would be far better 
to call these languages by the purely negative 

* ' '• Turanian speecli is rather a stage than a form of language ; 
it seems to be the form into which human discourse, naturally, 
and, as it were, spontaneously throws itself. . . The principle of 
agglutination, as it is called, which is its most marked charac- 
teristic, seems almost a necessary feature of any language in a 
constant state of flux and change, absolutely devoid of a literature, 
and maintaining itself in existence by means of the scanty con- 
versation of Nomades," — Eawlinson's Herodotus^ i. p. 645. 



202 AN ESSAY ON 

name, AUophylian,* — a name wliich involves no 
hypothesis, and which has the advantage of being 
the simple assertion of a fact. 

But even supposing that we unhesitatingly 
admit a postulate so large as that required of us, 
by the supposition that the Nomad languages 
may be united into one family, which has points 
of affinity with the dialects of Africa and America, 
and even with Chinese, the further and more 
important question still remains ; Are there any 
j)oints of osculation between the languages of 
these three great distinct families ? Is there any 
evidence in the present state of philology suffi- 
ciently strong to induce a scientific belief in the 
primitive unity of human language, and therefore 
of the human race ? The answer to that question 
must be found in the next chapter, and I need 
only premise, that it is here treated as a question 
of pure science, and is entirely separated from its 
theological bearings. The question before us is 
not '^ must we believe in the unity of the human 
race ? " but '' does philology furnish any proofs 
or presumptions of the unity of the human race ? " 

"^ It is rather strange that this name, so peculiarly appropriate, 
and so much preferable to the other, has not met with wider 
acceptation. It was suggested by Dr. Prichard, ' * the greatest of 
English ethnologists." 



THE OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 203 



CHAPTEE X. 

IJARE THEEE ANY PROOFS OF A SINGLE PRIMITIVE 
LANGUAGE ? 

* ' Innumersg linguae dissimillim£e inter se, ita ut nullis macliinis 
lad cominuiiem originem retrahi possint." — F. Schlegel. 

Besides the immense number of languages 
inow spoken over the surface of the globe, we 
must remember that hundreds have now died 
away altogether, and left no trace behind them. 
,' Even in our own times, languages are dying out ; 
the last person who could speak Cornish died 
almost within this generation,* and it is probable 
jl that Manx will not long survive, although it may 
be violently galvanized into a semblance of 
vitality. Many of the sporadic dialects, spoken 
by the North American Indians, have disap- 
peared with the tribes that spoke them; and 
Humboldt even mentions that he had seen a 
parrot which was the only living thing that 
preserved the articulation of one forgotten 

* Dolly Pentreath, the last person wlio could speak Cornish, 
died in 1770. 



204 AX ESSAY ON 

tongue. Every extant language has grown out 
of the death of a preceding one.* '' Like a tree, - 
unobserved through the solitude of a thousand 
years, up grows the mighty stem, and the mighty 
branches of a magnificent speech. No man saw 
the seed planted; no eye noticed the infant 
sprouts ; no register was kept of the gradual 
widening of its girth, or of the growing circum- ^ 
ference of its shade, till the deciduous dialects ^ 
of surrounding barbarians dying out, the un- 
expected bole stands forth in all its magni- 
tude, carrying aloft in its foliage, the poetry, 
the history, and the philosophy of an heroic 
people."! 

Thus the Greeks and Eomans t displaced by 
their dominant idioms numerous languages of 
Southern and Central Europe ; the Arabs 
effaced the indigenous dialects of a large portion 
of Western Asia, and Northern' and Eastern 
Africa; the Spanish and Portuguese have ex- 
pelled a crowd of American languages. Again, the 
Visigoths and Alani lost in Spain both their 
name and their language ; the Ostrogoths and 
Heruli suffered the same fate in Italy; and in 

* Bunsen, Outlines^ ii. 92. 

t Ferrier's Institutes of Metaj^hysics, p. 13. 

J Adr. Balbi, Atlas ethnographiq^ae. Disc, prelim. Ixxv — Ixxix. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 205 

short, we may fairly suppose that the dead lan- 
guages of the world are nearly as numerous as 
those that are still hving. 

. Passing o^^r the dead languages, is it possible 
to deduce even all living languages from one 
primitive speech ? 

jEven those who believe in a primitive language 
admit that the three families of language are 
irreducible, i.e. incapable of being derived from 
one another. 

'^ These three systems of grammar (Arian, 
Semitic, and Turanian), are/'' says Professor 
Max Miiller, ^'perfectly distinct, and it is im- 
possible to derive the grammatical forms of the 
one from those of the other, though we cannot 
deny that in their radical elements the three 
families of human speech may have had a com- 
mon source." 

Attempts have, indeed, been made to connect 
Hebrew and Sanskiit, but the adduced points of 
osculation are so few and dubious, that such 
attempts must be pronounced to be egregious 
failures. Dr, Prichard endeavoured to prove a 
connection between Celtic and Hebrew, but '' he 
succeeds no better than those who had made 
the same attempt before him. In nearly every 
case, the identity of the terms compared is 



206 AN ESSAY ON 

questionable, and in many it is demonstrably 
imaginary."* 

It must then be allowed, that the Indo-European 
and Semitic families are in their grammatical 
system (which affords the truest, if not the only 
test of affinity) radically distinct, and can in no 
way be derived from each other. The motto of 
the old school, that " all languages are dialects 
of a single one," must be abandoned for ever. 

But even if it could be shown that there is an 
affinity between Hebrew and Sanslait, a far more 
difficult task would remain for those who endea- 
vour to prove from philology the original unity of 
the human race ; for it would be still necessary 
for them to show further the Turanian unity, and 
the possibility of a primitive nucleus, not only 
for Semitic, and Arian, and Turanian languages, 
(assuming this to comprise even the Malay, 

■^ Garnett's Plnlol. Essays, p. 85, &c., where the supposed 
instances are examined. Most of them are, as might have been 
expected, simple onomatopoeias of the most obvious kind. See 
Eenan, Hist, des Langues Sem. p. 450 seqq. Kothing requires 
more care than an inquiry of this kind ; — often two words 
which have identically the same letters hare no connection with 
each other, while two others derived from a common source have 
not one letter in common. As an instance of the former case, 
take the French souris ''a smile," and souris *^ a mouse," (from 
suhridere and sojrx respectively) ; as an instance of the latter, take 
the word cousin, derived from soro7' through consolrinus. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 207 

Australian, Papuan, Kaffir, Esquimaux, &c.), 
but also for these languages and the ungram- 
matical, unagglutinative, monosyllabic Chinese. 
Yet, such is the task undertaken, with vast 
learning and marvellous ingenuit}^, by Professor 
Miiller and Baron Bunsen. It will, however, be 
admitted, that the j)roved existence of great 
irreducible families is a strong a ])riovi evidence 
against them. Let us examine some of their 
main arguments. 

1. ''Though in physical ethnology we cannot 
derive the Negro from the Malay, or the Malay 
from the Negro type, we may look upon each 
as a modification of a common and more general 
type. The same applies to the types of lan- 
guage. We cannot derive Sanskrit from Hebrew, 
or Plebrew from Sanskrit: but we can well 
understand how both may have proceeded from 
one common source."* 

Thus it is argued, that although these families 
of language cannot, in their present state, have 
been derived from each other, yet it is possible 
to suppose that they are widely diverging radii 
from the same original centre ; that they may 
all have sprung from a primitive language, whose 
existence we may conjecture, just as we should 

* Outlines, i. 476. 



208 AN ESSAY ON 

have conjectured the existence of such a lan- 
guage as the Latin, to account for the numerous 
marks of affinity between the Eomance dialects. 

But this projDOsition is hedged in by difficulties. 
The very unity of the gi^at Arian and Semitic 
families tells powerfully against it. If the 
members of these families retain, after the 
separation of many hundred years, the most 
strikiag similarity, in the roots of the words 
which refer to the relations of life, and to the 
primitive acts of weaving and the working of 
metals, how is it possible to beheve that the 
points of resemblance between Sanskrit and 
Hebrew, or between Chinese and Greek, are so 
extremely few, and so dubiously vague, that they 
hardly afford the shadow of a presumption in 
favour of the hypothesis which they are adduced 
to support ? Even if we grant the jDOStulated 
length of time — thousands and thousands of 
years — which take us back to a period when 
historical "chronology borders on the geologic 
eras," which will alone render such a diversity of 
sister languages poss'ible, we confess that it still 
appears to us so improbable, that it rather wears 
the apj)earance of an arbitrary hypothesis, than 
an inductive conclusion. 

2. The main affinities supposed to exist be- 



THE OPJGIX OF LANGUAGE. 209 

tween language of the different families, will be 
found at large in the '' Outlines of the Philosophy 
of Universal History." Great stress is there laid 
(i.) on the supposed discovery of certain non-Sans- 
kritic elements in Celtic, vrhich form the Hnk by 
which the Indo-European family approaches the 
Tm^anian formations : and (ii.) the establishment 
of a connection between the Arian and Semitic 
families, by a reduction of the Hebrew triliteral 
roots to biliteral ones. 

(i.) While wishing to allow the fullest weight to 
evervthino- which has been adduced bv Dr. Mever 
in proof of this discovery, and not professing to 
be fully able to weigh the value of the evidence, 
we cannot think that his researches have at all 
settled the Cjuestion. Beyond certain accidental 
and vague resemblances, a few lexicogTaphical 
similarities* easily explicable by onomatopc^ia, and 
a few words ^ adopted in consequence of foreign 

* OuiIi-neSy i. 143, 165 seqq. 

+ A TCTT cnrions instance of this is the word p'r shoes, 
fonnd in a Syro-Chaldaic Lectionarinm in the Vatican. We may 
here remark that Dr. Young's celebrated calcnlation — ^that, if eight 
words are identical in two languages, the chances of a direct 
relation between the languages are 100,000 to one — is very 
exceptionable. See Dr. Latham, in the Encycl. Brit. Art. Lan- 
guage. The greatest care is necessary to distinguish between 
words really cognate, and accidental isolated resemblances. See 
Pictet, Orig. Lid. p. 13, 17. 

p 



210 AN ESSAY ON 

influences, and that general affinity wliicli we 
sliould expect from the ascertained fact of the 
psychological unity of the human race, nothing 
that we have hitherto met with seems at all 
adequate to counterbalance the enormous diffi- 
culty of supposing that families, closely united 
together, yet radically distinct from each other, i 
could, even during thousands of years, have 
diverged so widely, from a common source. 
Ac[ain. we must ask, if it was possible for one 
primitive language to pass through stages of 
development so irreconcileably different as those 
represented by Hebrew and Sanskiit, what cause 
can be adduced sufficient to account for the fact 
that after the lapse of three millenniums, a Lithu- 
anian peasant could almost understand the com- 
monest of Sanskrit verbs ?* 

The Chinese must always remain a stumbling- 
block in the way of all theories respecting a 
primitive language. Radical as is the dissimi- 
larity between Arian and Semitic languages, and. 
wide as is the abvss between their si-ammatical 
systems, yet they almost appear like sisters when 
compared with the Chinese, which has nothing 
like the organic principle of grammar at all. 
Indeed; so wide is the difference between Chinese 

* Surveij of Lang. p. 11. 



THE OHIGIX OF LANGUAGE . 211 

and Sanskrit, that the richness of human intelli- 
gence in the formation of language receives no 
more striking illustration than the fact that, as 
we have already observed, these languages have 
absolutely nothing in common except the end at 

I which they aim. This end is in both cases the 
expression of thought, and it is attained as well 
in Chinese as in the grammatical languages, 
although the means are wholly different. 

(ii.) Very great stress has been laid on the 
general lexicographical affinity between Hebrew 
and Sanskrit, produced by the reduction of the 
Hebrew triliteral roots to biliteral ones. This 
was suggested by Klaproth, and supported with 
great learning and industry by Fllrst and 
Delitzsch. We have already alluded to it, and 
can only repeat here, that it is not accepted as 
certain, or even as probable, by some high 
authorities. We cannot now recount the nume- 
rous and weighty objections brought against this 
attempt by the historian of the Semitic languages* 
— objections derived mainly from the extreme 

j laxity of the process which even involves the ex- 
traordinary hypothesis, that these triliteral roots 
were formed by prefixes and suffixes, and that the 
prefixes have nothing determinate about them, 

* Renac, p. 216. 

p 2 



212 AX ESSAY ON 

but tliat every letter in the alphabet might be used 
for the purpose, — an hypothesis contrary to the 
most essential principles of language. It will be 
sufficient to repeat his questions. How can we 
conceive the passage from the monosyllabic to 
the triliteral stage ? "What cause can be assigned 
for it ? At what epoch did it take place ? Was 
it due to the multiplication of ideas or the inven- 
tion of writing ? W^as this stage of gi^ammatical 
innovation the result of chance, or of a common 
agreement ? To these inquiries, no answer ever 
has been or can be given. The supposition 
of an original biliteralism must be considered 
(as we said before) simply as a convenient hypo- 
thesis, and must not be taken for an historical 
fact. 

Languages, of course, develope ; but it is, as 
we have seen, by the germinad development of a 
rudimentary idea, and not by this process of gi'oss 
exterior concretion for which no single parallel 
can be suggested. The only monosyllabic dia- 
lects which we know, viz., those of Eastern Asia, 
have continued monosyllabic for unknown ages. 
Chinese cannot attain to a gi'ammar, and the 
Semitic languages could never aiTive either at 
regularly written vowels, or at a satisfactory 
system of moods and tenses. Grammar is to a 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 213 

language its nnalterahle individuality. The 
growth and change of language has nothing 
analogous to grammatical revolution; it is due 
to a silent, a spontaneous, an unconscious genius, 
not to deliberate reflexion, or conscious altera- 
tion. All idioms which have been artificially 
altered {e.g. Eabbinic Hebrew), betray the fact 
by their harshness and awkwardness, — theii^ 
want of harmony and flexibility ; they bear no 
resemblance to those languages which are the 
genuine instrument of a nation's thoughts. 

3. Undoubtedly the strongest argument in 
favour of a Primitive Language arises from the 
phenomenon of several languages which appear 
to occuj)y an anomalous position on the frontier 
of the great kingdoms of speech, and to present 
a lexicographical affinity with one family, and a 
grammatical affinity with another family. Such 
languages are the Egyptian, the Berber, the 
Touareg, and generally the languages of 
Northern and Eastern Africa, which resemble 
the Semitic tongues, in some parts of their 
vocabulary, but differ widely from them in all the 
rest. Similarly, the Tibetian and Burmese stand 
on the confines of the monosyllabic languages. 

Perhaps the only way to account for these 
strange appearances is to suppose that language 



214 AN ESSAY OX 

had a period of primitive fusibility,* dui'ing 
which they were susceptible of great modification 
from contact with other languages also in an 
ante-historical and embryonary state. It is 
impossible, otherwise, to explain the identity, 
for instance, of the pronouns and numerals in 
Coptic and the Semitic languages, or to account 
for the fact that among different races t is the 
sign of the second person singular, and n, of the 
first person plural. The analogies which guided 
the first men in such cases entii'ely escape om- 
power of perception. Philology in its present 
state has not sufficient materials to decide how 
can it be that a few essential elements in a 
vocabulary should be nearly the same in tvro 
languages, while yet they drffer totally in so 
important a peaiicular as the flexions of the 
noun and verb. We know, however, as an 
historical fact, that wide as is the difierence 
between the Semitic and Egyptian systems of 
civilisation, and ditierent as are the physical 
ti'aits of the two nations, yet that f::" :a:-.-^" '.gcS 
the Semitic influence was very strongly lelt in 
Egypt, t Egypt, indeed, was only a naiTow valley, 
surrounded by Semitic Nomads, who lived side 

* Hist, des Zangues Sem. p. 84 s^3q. 

f Eenan quotes Movers, I/ie Phmiizkn^ L S3. 



THE ORIGIN' OF LANGUAGE. 2l5 

by side v;ith the sedentary population ; some- 
times victorious, sometimes subject, — always 
detested. The Egyptian language belongs then to 
a Chamitic family, to which also belong the Ber- 
ber, and other indigenous languages of Xorthern 
Africa ; a family which is spread in Africa from 
the Eed Sea to Senegal, and from the Mediter- 
ranean to the Niger. 

Of these languages, the Berber presents nume- 
rous grammatical affinities with the Hebrew, but 
is completely distinct in its vocabulary. This, 
too, may be accounted for by the fact, that it has 
also been submitted to long ages of Semitic influ- 
ence, in consequence of its relations with Cartha- 
ginian and Arabic. The possibility of a state of 
language so incomplete as to admit of these radical 
influences from contact with superior idioms, is 
an important subject for philological inquiiy. 

TTe ai^e forced then to conclude that whatever 
may be the other arguments, physiological and 
historical, for a material unity of the human race, 
a belief, which understood in a high psychological 
sense, will meet with universal acceptation, philo- 
logy alone, so far as it has yet proceeded, adds 
no contribution to the probability of such a view. 
Of the primitive men we know little or nothing, 
nor can we advance bevond the redon of con- 



216 AN ESSAY ON 

jectm-e; but language does reveal to us some- 
thing about the origin of nations, and the appa- 
rition of the main races of humanity would 
appear to have been in the following succession. 

^Ist. Inferior races which have no history, 
coTering the soil since an epoch which must be 
determined by geology rather than by history.* 
In general, these races have disappeared in those 
parts of the world where the gTeat civilised races 
have advanced. The Ai^ians and the Semites have 
everywhere found the traces of these haK-savage 
tribes which they exterminate, and which often 
survive in their legends as gigantic or magical, 
and autochthonous races. The relics of their 
primitive humanity are found in those parts of 
the world where the great races have not estab- 
lished themselves, and they present a profound 
diversity, varying from the sweet and simple 
child of the Antilles to the voluptuous Tahitian, 
and the wicked population of Borneo and Assam. 
But wherever found, these primitive tribes betray 
an absolute incapacity for organisation and pro- 
gress ; and they wither away before the advance 
of civilisation, and pine into a sickness and 

* Hist, des Langv^es Bern. 490, 491. "WTieneyer passages are in 
semi-inverted commas, it mil be understood tkat they are almost 

directly translated from tLe author referred to. 



THE OEIGLN' OF LAXGUAC-Z. 217 

decay from which, as far as we can see at 
present, not even the healing influences of 
Christianity are sufficient to rescue them.* 

'Sndly. The apparition of the first civilised 
races ; Chinese in Eastern Asia, the Cushites 
and Chamites in Western Asia and Africa. 
Early civilisations stamped with a materialistic 
character ; religious and poetic instincts slightly 

i developed ; a feeble sentiment of art, but a refined 

' sentiment of elegance ; a great aptitude for 
manual arts and the applied sciences ; literatures 
exact, but without an ideal ; a turn for business, 
but an absence of public spirit and political life ; 
perfect administrations, but little militaiy apti- 

, tude ; language monosyllabic and flexionless 
(Egyptian, Chinese) ; hieroglyphic or ideo- 
graphic systems of writing. These races have a 
history of three or four thousand years before 

■ the Christian era. All the Cushite and Chamite 
civilisations have disappeared before the advance 
of the Arians and Shemites : but in China this 
type of primitive civilisation has survived even 

I to the present day. 

' 3rdly. Apparition of the great noble races, 



* Tlie accounts of various missionaries among the New 
Zealanders, American Indians, and aboriginal Anstralians, give a 
strange and mournful confirmation of these assertions. 



218 AX ESSAY ON 

Aiians and Shemites, coming from the Imaus. 
These races appeared simultaneouslj in history, 
the Shemites in Ai^menia, the Aiians in Bactriana, 
about two thousand years before the Christian ' 
era. Inferior to the Chamites and Cushites in 
external civilisation, material works, and the 
science of imperial organisation, they infinitely 
excel them in vigour, courage, poetic and \ 
religious genius. The Arians far surpass the 
Shemites in political and military arts, and in 
their intelligence and caj)acity for rational specu- 
lation, but the Shemites long preserved a religious 
superiority, and ended by di'awing almost every 
Arian nation to their monotheistic conceptions. 
In this point of view Islaniism crowns the essen- 
tial work of the Shemites, which has been to 
simplify the human spirit — to banish polytheism 
and those enormous complications in which the 
religious thought of the Arians became entangled. 
This mission once accomplished, the Shemite race 
rapidly declines, and leaves the Arian race to 
march alone at the head of the destinies of 
mankind.' 

Such are some of the conclusions to which 
philology would seem to point; but they are 
only stated with a perfect readiness to abandon 
all present inferences when we are rec[uired to 



THZ OBIG-IX OF LAXGUACtE. 219 

- j SO by a wider knowledge, and with a profound 
consciousness that what we know as yet is but 
a drop compared to the ocean, which is still 
untraversed and unknown. 

Note. — Per seme very aoeiirate original observations on the 
Egyriian liingiiagc, I refer the reader to a remarkable book, the 
Gi:'.icid :f the Earth and Man, 2nd. ed. pp. 255 — 2oS. To 
Mr. Eegirald Stnart Poole, the Editor of that can-iid and learned 
Essay, I take this opportunity of returning my thanks. 



220 AN ESSAY ON 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE FUTURE OF LANGUAGE. 

' ' Even as a hawke fleetli not Lie witli one wing, even so a man 
reacbetli not to excellency with one tongue." — Roger Aschax. 

We have seen that philology offers no proof 
of a universal primitive language. The question 
now arises, Is there any probability of a universal 
future language ? Does it seem likely that the 
day will ever come when all men shall be of one 
speech ? The noble Indo- Germanic race has 
carried its power and its conquests over a vast 
surface of the globe, and our own tongue * — 
which receives bj^ common consent the meed of 
the most powerful of existing languages — is pro- 
bably spoken by at least a hundred milhons of 
the human race. Have we any reason to believe 

* That there is more probability in favour of English becoming 
prevalent throughout the globe, than in favour of any other lan- 
guage acquiring a future universality, is admitted by all who 
have studied the subject. See Benloew, Apejyu General^ p. 92. 
Grimm, Ueber der Ursprung, p, 50. Russian is another language 
which probably has a great future. 



THE OEIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 221 

that English will hereafter prevail over every 
other dialect, and become in some form or other 
the language of the world ? 

That the Arian race is the destined inheritor 
of the future world seems clear to the least 
discriminating glance, because it has proved 
itself to be the race most capable of perfectibility, 
and therefore most worthy of power. But that 
any one language spoken by the various branches 
of their race will ultimately prevail to the ex- 
clusion of all others is an event which hardly 
seems probable; if probable, it is still in the 
present state of the world undesirable ; and even 
were it certain, yet the permanent existence of 
such a language is incompatible with the present 
condition of human intelligence. 

1. The development of a future universal lan- 
guage seems improbable. It is true that dialects 
become merged in languages, and these languages 
lost in others still more extensive, just as streams 
flow into rivers, and rivers into the sea. It is 
true that diversity of idioms is the characteristic 
of barbarism, and unity the slow result of civi- 
lisation. But against these considerations we 
must set the extraordinary tenacity of national 
associations and national characteristics. How- 
ever far we may look into the future, we see 



222 AN ESSAY OX 

notliingto show us that the distinctions of nations 
were not intended to be as permanent as the 
oceans that divide them; and nothing to make 
us expect that all humankind will be gathered 
hereafter (in its present general condition) under 
one universal empire, and into one school of 
religion and of thought. 

2. But even were it probable that there would 
be only one language hereafter, such a consum- 
mation would not be desirable, because it would 
greatly hinder the search for truth, and would 
tend to reduce men to a dead level of uniformity, 
a Chinese dryness and mediocrity of intelligence. 
It is, indeed, conceivable that a universal growth 
of mammon-worship, making merchandise almost 
the only occupation of mankind, might tend to 
give to languages that form of practical abbre- 
viation which we find in telegraphic despatches, 
and which, to economise phrases and expense, 
neglects grammar, and puts down the smallest 
possible number of words, with no desire beyond 
that of being barely understood.* But such 
abbreviation, useful as it may be for certain 
purposes, would, if applied to all the forms of 
language, despoil it for ever of all ornament and 
all poetic charm, and so far from enabling us to 

* Benloew, Apercu General, p. 91. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. '223 

rival the noble languages of antiquity, would 
reduce us to a condition from which the instincts 
of our race would inevitably break loose, to begin 
a fresh career of discovery and thought. 

'' Truths," said Coleridge,* '' of all others the 
most awful and interestinsf are too often con- 

o 

sidered so true that they lose all the i^ower of 
truths and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the 
soul, side by side with the most depised and 
exploded errors." By frequent use, as by re- 
peated attrition, the brightness and beauty of a 
word is worn bare, and it requires a distinct 
effort of attention to restore the full significance 
to the forms of expression with which we are 
most familiar. *' Hence it is," says Mr. Mill, t 
" that the traditional maxims of old experience, 
though seldom questioned, have often so little 
effect on the conduct of life, because their mean- 
ing is never, by most persons, really felt, until 
personal experience has brought it home. And 
thus, also, it is that so many doctrines of re- 
ligion, ethics, and even politics, so full of mean- 
ing and reahty to first converts, have manifested 
a tendency to degenerate rapidly into lifeless 
dogmas, which tendency all the efforts of an 
education expressly and skilfully directed to 

* Aids to Reflection f p. 1. f MiU's Logic, ii. 221. 



224 



AN ESSAY ON 



keei^ing the meaning alive are barely found suffi- 
cient to counteract." The weight and importance 
of these remarks will best be felt by those who 
have observed how new and rare meanings are 
perceived when we read the w^ords, for instance, 
of Holy "Writ in th'eir original language, and 
lose sight for a moment of those groundless 
fancies with which long association has confused 
our perception. To study the Bible in other 
languages than our own is like looking upon the 
Urim and Thummim when, for him who rightly 
consulted it, the fire of the divine messages 
flashed upon its oracular and graven gems. 

Hence language is most important, is almost 
indispensable to the human race for the perpetual 
preservation of truths which would otherwise be 
banished ''to the lumber-room of the memorj^," 
rather than be prepared for use '' in the work- 
shop of the mind." For words are constantly 
acquiring new shades of meaning in consequence 
of the things which they connote, and to such an 
extent is this the case, that our quotations of an 
author's actual words often involve a gross 
anachronism, because his '' pure ideas " * have 

* These thoughts are admirably developed in a beautiful Essay- 
on the Abstract Idea of the New Testament, by Mr. Jowett (ii. 90). 
See, too, W. von Humboldt's tract Ueber d, Entstehen d. grammat. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 225 

often become our ''mixed modes." If, for in- 
stance, we were to use the word " gravitation " 
in translating various passages of ancient authors, 
we might be led to assert that the great dis- 
covery of Newton had been anticipated by hun- 
dreds of years ; and yet we know that those 
authors had no conception whatever of the law 
which that word recalls to our minds. 

Both in the history of the world, and in the 
growth of individual intellects, the study of 
language has produced the noblest results. To 
it more than to any other cause we owe the out- 
burst of freedom in thought which produced the 
Reformation, and the mighty advance of humanity 
which followed that emancipation of the intellect 
of Europe from the ignorance fostered by a 
depressing superstition ; and to it in very great 
measure we owe the matchless power and beauty 
of our own tongue. " Indeed, the adoption of 
words from dead languages into English has, 
above all other causes, tended to increase the 
number of our simple ideas, because the asso- 
ciations of such words being lost in the transfer 

Formen und ihren Einfiuss auf die Ideenentwickelung^ as well 
as the chapter Ueber die Yerschiedenlieit des MenscJdichen 
SprachhaueSy which forms the introduction to the treatise on the 
Kawi language. 

Q 



226 ,.AN ESSAY ON 

they are at once refined from all alloy of sense 
and ex]3erience." 

The old Eoman poet,* proud in the unusual 
erudition which had made him master of three 
languages, used to declare, that he had three 
hearts, and his opinion has been echoed by a 
modern poet t with emphatic commendation — 

** Mit jeder Spraclie melir, die Du eiiernst, befreist 
Du einen bis daber in Dir gebundenen Geist, 
Der jetzo tbatig wird mit eigner Deukverbindting, 
Die aufscbliesst Tmbekaimt gewesene "Weltempfindung. 
Ein alter Dicbter, der ntu' dreier Spracben Graben 
Besessen, nibnite sicb der Seelen drei zn baben, 
Und wirklicb batt' in sicb alle ^lenscbengeister 
Der Geist vereint, der recbt war' alle Spracben Meister." 

The Emperor Charles Y. went still further, and 
declared that '' in proportion t to the number of 
languages which a man knew, in that propoition 
was he more of a man." There may have been 
exaggeration in this expression, but at any rate 
it arose from the conviction of an important 
truth. And we may add with Gothe the un- 



* Q. Ennius tria corda se babere dicebat, qnod loqni Grnece et 
Latine et Osce sciret." — A. Gell. 

+ Eiickert, 

t ^*I1 disoit et repetoit souvent, qnand il tomboit snr la beante 
des langnes, .... qn'autant de langnes que rbomme S9ait parler, 
antant de fois est il bomme." — Brantome. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAaE. 22? 

doubted certainty, '' War fremde spraclie nicht 
kennt, weissnichts von seiner eigenen." Perhaps 
in this sentence we may find the reasons why so 
few know their own language in half its richness 
and power. 

8. A universal language could not, in the pre- 
sent state of human intelligence, last for any 
long period. New circumstances of life, new 
discoveries of thought, new conquests of art and 
science, would require new forms of expression. 
The influences of climate and history would 
produce fresh revolutions in the character of 
nations, and the change of character would 
necessitate modifications of the prevalent idiom, 
which in the course of time would diverge so 
widely from the parent language, as to be unin- 
telligible unless separately acquired. There is 
in language, as we have seen repeatedly, an 
organic life ; it is an incessant act of creation, 
ever progressing, ever developing. To reduce it 
to one stereotyped* and universal form would be 
to contradict the very law of its being, by sub- 
stituting an eternal immobility for that power of 
growth and alteration which constitutes its very 
existence. 

If all men be hereafter of one speech, it can 

* See Destutt de Tracy, Grammaire Or. vi. 



228 AN ESSAY ON LANGUAGE. 

only be after they have arrived at a condition 
when knowledge has superseded the necessity of 
inquiry, when intuition supplies the place of 
discovery, and certainty has been substituted for 
faith. As far as the science of philology can 
pronounce an opinion, we must infer, that the 
familiar line will remain true henceforth as 
heretofore — 

UoWal fiev &u7]to7s yXcbrrai, juia 8' "'AOavdroicri. 
Mortals have many languages, the Immortals one alone. 



APPENDIX. 



A LIST OF SOME BOOKS, VALUABLE AS AIDS IX 
THE GENEKAL STUDY OF PHILOLOOY. 



Geemax. 

,j Bopp, Yergleichende Grammatik. 

\ Bopp, YokaHsmiis. 

I Bopv, Accentnationssystem. 

\ Grimmy Ueber clen L^rspnmg der Spraclie. Berlin, 1858. 

; GHmm, GescMclite der Deiitscli. Spraclie. 

i Grimm, Ueber die namen der Donners. 1856. 

■ Heyse, System der Spracliwissenscliaft. Berlin, 1856. 
, StemtJial, Der Urspiiing der Spraclie. Berlin, 1858. 

f W, von HuTiiboldt, L^eber die Yerscliiedenlieit des Meiiscblicben 

jj Spraclibaues. 1836. 

i Steinthal, Grammatik, Logik, imd Psycbologie. Berlin, 1855. 

Lersch, Die Spraclipbilosopliie der Alt en. Bonn, 1841. 
ji Weher, Indische Skizzen. Berlin, 1857. 

Pottj Etymologisclie Forscbiingen. 

Pott, Die UngleicKLieit Menscliliclier Eassen. 

SchUgcl, Pkilosophisclie Yoiiesungen. T>^ien. 1830. 

Schleiclur, Linguist. Untersnchnngen. 

ZeiLss, Grammatica Keltica. 

Feexch. 

- Renan, De I'Origine dn Langage. 2me ed. Paris, 1858. 
Bman, Histoire et Systeme Compares des Langnes Semitiqiies. 
Paris, 1858. 

■ B&nloeio, Apergii General de la Science Comparative des Lan- 
gues. Paris, 1858. 



230 LIST OF BOOKS, ETC. 

Benloew, De rAccentuation dans les langues Indo-Europeennes. 
Paris, 1847. 

CliarTna, Essai sur le Langage. Paris, 1846. 

PicUt, Les Origines Indo-Eiu'opeennes. Paris, 1859. 

Nodier, IsTotions de Linguistique. 

Victor Cousin^ Coiirs de 1829, et Fragmens Pliilosoj)Liqiies. 

Degerando, De signes et de Tart de penser. 

BalMj Introduction a Tatlas etlinograpliique du globe. 

Fauriel, Dante et les Origines de la Langue et de la Literature 
Italienne. 

TJwm77iereI, Sur la Fusion de I'Anglo-Xorman avec 1' Anglo- 
Saxon. 

ExCtLISH. 

Rome Tooke, Diversions of Purley. 

Harris, Hermes. 

Bunsen, Philosopliy of Universal History. 

Max MillUr, Survey of Languages. 

Max MillUr, Oxford Essay on Comparative Mythology. 

Lathaiiij The English Language. 

Dr. Donaldson, ]N'ew Cratylus. 

Dr. Donaldson, Yarronianus. 

Garnett, Philosophical Essays. 

Hensleiglh Wedgwood, Etymological Dictionary. 

Transactions of the Philological Society. 

I have here indicated a few only out of a very- 
large number of books which will be found useful 
by a Philological student. The list might be very 
easily and very considerably enlarged, but any 
one who once takes up the study will find in the 
books here mentioned ample materials on which 
to commence. The questions suggested by the 



LIST OF BOOKS, ETC. 231 

study of Language are so closely connected with 

those of Moral Philosophy, that almost every 

philosophical work contains matter valuable to 

the Philologist. From Plato, Aristotle, and 

Cicero, dovm to Locke and Leibnitz, there is no 

I great philosoj)her Trho has not in some degree 

entered on reasonings respecting the nature and 

origin of Language. Perhaps there is no more 

,, important result from the study of Language 

i than the greater clearness which it necessarily 

gives to our metaphysical conceptions, and the 

attention which it necessarily tui'ns to the 

phenomena of the mind. 



THE END. 



BEADErET A^D ETAX5, PHLN'TIIKS, WHIIETi.IABS. 



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